


Best Left Forgotten

by MaxyK35



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxyK35/pseuds/MaxyK35
Summary: It's more than 10 years since the war and Harry's life is very settled and (mostly) happy, until he comes across a stranger with a very familiar face and it all gets turned upside down.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Sirius Black/Harry Potter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 25





	1. Family Holidays and Familiar Faces

**Author's Note:**

> So this looks like it's going to be a long one, which is something that I haven't really done much before so we'll see how that goes...
> 
> Also I truly suck at summaries so... sorry about that i guess

Harry loved being a father, his kids were his life, but he had to admit it had been an awful lot easier as a job before they’d got old enough to run around. 

“James get back over here, now!” 

James, 7 years old and somehow capable of causing as much destruction as a small white rhino, had somehow got over to the other side of the square they were in and was trying to climb into a fountain, splashing water all over surrounding tourists trying to take romantic photos. Harry kept one hand on Albus’ arm, who was clearly torn between chasing after his big brother and investigating a large poodle nearby their cafe table. Harry looked over at Ginny for support who was already getting up to make her way over, depositing Lily on his lap who, thankfully, was fast asleep. As she reached the fountain, James noticed her and retreated into the middle of the water, shouting and splashing as he went, eventually causing his mother to have to climb in after him and drag him out by the armpits. Harry was careful to school his face not to laugh as she came back, soaked to the waist with a giggling James in tow. In hindsight, coming on a family holiday around so many muggles may have not been the best idea- the last couple of times they had been away they had gone to family friendly types of wizard resorts, managing their chaotic children was much easier with the aid of magic, but it was always very hard to get any real rest when people were coming over every 10 minutes to ask for an autograph or a photo or just plain staring at them across the pool. And they did need the rest, things had been stressful the last couple of years since Lily had been born… Maybe before that even, the kids took a lot out of them and they both had busy jobs and it was sometimes hard to find the time for each other. But actually, as it turned out, two in muggle Greece with 3 children who were all determined to run wild wasn’t as relaxing as Harry had initially thought, four days in Harry was, if anything, more exhausted then he had been before they got here, and Ginny was getting increasingly more tetchy by the hour. 

“Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad” James was tugging on his t-shirt and leaning his, very wet, head against his side, looking up at him and trying to get his attention. Harry scooped him up and sat him on his lap (with a little more difficulty than he would have liked, picking him up was getting more challenging). James whinged “Daaaad no” but was ignored.

“What’s up mate?”

James wriggled on his lap in an attempt to escape while flailing his arm vaguely in the direction of a board with ice creams on. 

“Sorry mate, I don’t understand octopus arms.”

“Ice cream!”

“Ice cream, what?”

“Ice cream please?”

Harry looked over to Ginny for approval and she frowned, shaking her head.

“Sorry mate, mum says no this time.”

“Muuuuuumm!”

Albus joined in and both of the boys began haranguing Ginny, begging to be able to have an ice cream, waking Lily up from her sleep in the process. Ginny sighed, looking thoroughly unimpressed, Harry suspected mostly with him.

“Come on, lets go back.”

Harry paid for the coffees and the drinks the kids had had and they started the stilted journey back to their hotel. They had caved that morning and arranged for a (magical) babysitter to come and look after the kids in the evening so they could have a more adult night just the two of them, Harry hoped that would help them both be a bit more relaxed. Harry set the boys to getting dressed in their room ready for the babysitter’s arrival, they were not particularly pleased that they were being left behind but he knew they’d forget about it pretty quickly once he and Ginny were gone. The babysitter was a young woman who Ginny had been assured had plenty of experience with more difficult magical children and harry was certain the kids would have much more fun staying in with her than they would at a stuffy restaurant with him and Ginny. Soon enough there was a knock on the door and Harry welcomed the babysitter in, he showed her where everything was and explained their schedule and where they would be and all the ways to contact them in what was clearly more detail than was necessary and found himself quickly shuffled out of the door to their adjoining room, where Ginny was getting ready to go out. He smiled as he watched her putting some earrings on in front of the mirror and crossed the room to give her a kiss, but his stomach sank a little when she turned her cheek to him.

He decided to just power through and hope that whatever she was annoyed about would blow over, not that he had found this often worked as a conflict management tactic but he was ever hopeful.

“You look beautiful as always.”

Ginny clearly tried her best to give a smile but the fact that she was so obviously annoyed with him made it look a little closer to a grimace. He sat down next to her and rubbed her shoulders, kissing her on the cheek again.

“It will be nice to finally get a bit of time alone, right?”

“Yes, of course, I’m looking forward to it.” She didn’t sound entirely like she was lying but her shoulders were tense and she wasn’t meeting his gaze in the mirror, seeming hyper focused on rearranging bits of her hair. Harry rolled his eyes. And then immediately realised that was a stupid move.

“What?” Ginny snapped.

“Nothing, nothing, I’m sorry.” Harry tried to backtrack “You’re just… clearly a bit irritated it all. I’m just trying to help you relax. I’m sorry.”

Ginny rubbed her face with her hand, sighing and suddenly just looking exhausted rather than annoyed. Harry tried again tentatively.

“I just want us to have a nice time together.”

“I know, I’m sorry for snapping… I just…. You know I hate it when you make me the bad guy.”

“What?”

“Earlier? You did it again. “Mum says no”. I’m just sick of always being the one who’s no fun, couldn’t you just have said no yourself?”

It finally clicked in Harry’s brain what she was talking about.

“Wait, you’re annoyed at me because of ice cream?” 

Clearly the wrong thing to say, Ginny was now back to annoyed.

“It’s not about ice cream Harry, it’s about you never backing me up, and making me always be the one that has to say no!”

“But you were the one saying no! I don’t give a shit if they have ice cream.” 

“They already had some about twenty minutes before, and you wouldn’t be the one cleaning up after them when Al inevitably got sick and James ran around smashing everything up because he’d had too much sugar! You knew I was going to say no so you just blamed it on me and made me the bad guy, again! I’m exhausted and it would just be nice if every now and then you had my back.”

Now Harry was annoyed too, ok she had mentioned this before and he had been meaning to make an effort not to do that anymore, but he really didn’t care about the ice cream and it wasn’t like he was a totally useless absentee parent that never helped out. And did they really have to argue about this right now? They were on holiday for Merlin’s sake…

“I didn’t think about it in the moment ok? And I’m sorry but is this really worth picking a fight over?”

“You were the one who brought it up!”

“But you were obviously going to be huffy about it until I did!”

Harry fully expected her to go apoplectic after that one but instead his wife seemed to lose all her angry energy and deflate, falling silent for a minute. He was just starting to get concerned that he had actually broken her when she spoke again, her voice much calmer.

“Look… it’s fine. Can we just try and have a nice night?”

This wasn’t at all what he was expecting but it seemed to be an end to the argument so he seized it with both hands.

“Yes, please, I’m sorry ok? I’ll try and do better. All I want right now is to spend a lovely evening in Greece with my beautiful wife.” He kissed her again on the cheek and retreated to go and try and do something with his hair before she had a chance to change her mind. 

It wasn’t that they fought all the time, usually they didn’t, there was just always a sort of underlying feeling that she wasn’t quite happy with something he was doing which was sort of worse; at least if they fought he knew what he’d done. He supposed most couples must go through stages like this from time to time, she had so much on her plate and he could never seem to quite satisfy her, and he would try and do the right thing but would just always miss the point somehow and after a while it was hard to be bothered to try; treading on eggshells was no fun, really very little of their time together these days was fun, and fun had been the main thing that Harry had always loved so much about Ginny in the first place - the way her eyes glinted when she had a devilish plan, her laugh, her cheeky side and her fire. But he knew people couldn’t be like that all the time, and things were just hard at the moment. They’d get back to how they were he was sure. And tonight they had the whole evening to themselves to just… be together. Yes, it would be good for them he was sure.

By the time he had finished trying and failing to change anything about his hair at all and left the bathroom, Ginny was dressed and ready to go. Harry took a second to make a show of admiring her.

“You look stunning, as always.” And she really was beautiful, she always had been

That earned him a genuine, warm smile and they headed out into the Summer night.

———

They’d first gone to a little bar near the square they’d visited earlier with the kids; the wine was delicious and the night air was warm, and after a couple of drinks Harry started to genuinely feel relaxed, maybe for the first time in months. Ginny seemed to be feeling the same, her laughs were coming more easily and she had started to chatter freely about her work and other goings on in her life in a way that made Harry realise he hadn’t really heard about any of those things for months. He supposed he hadn’t asked really, a thought which made him feel a bit uncomfortable in his stomach. He would do better, he would remember to make time and ask her about things and do things like this. He just got so caught up with work and the kids and everything but as soon as they got back he would do better. They left the bar and went on for dinner, eating mountains of delicious food until they were stuffed. Harry suggested they go for a walk to try and help it down, Ginny agreed and they left to wander round the nearby park. He took her hand and was unreasonably pleased when she squeezed his hand back and didn’t let go.

They walked in companionable silence, watching passers by.

“I’m so glad we did this.”

Ginny smiled and squeezed his hand again in agreement.

“Me too, we don’t spend enough time on… well, enough time. We should.”

“We will.” Harry repeated out loud the promise he had made to himself earlier. “When we get back we’ll just make time, for us. I’ve missed it.” And he thought that was true, he certainly didn’t like the rowing and the tension, he much preferred this.

“Me too. It’s just so hard, with the kids, and… everything. Do you ever think…” she trailed off and he looked at her questioningly. She shrugged slightly.

“I mean, do you ever worry we did it all a bit… young?” She suddenly seemed to realise what she’d said had come out wrong or wasn’t what she meant or something and began to backtrack. “I mean I wouldn’t change it, of course, and the kids are amazing, I love them more than anything. And I love you! And our life is great, I just… well do you ever wonder? Maybe I’m not making much sense.”

He sort of thought she was making sense, and he felt a little uncomfortable that he felt that way, like to admit that there was something to it was some kind of enormous betrayal to the life they’d built together. So instead of agreeing he turned to face her and took both of her hands, raising one to his lips to kiss it.

“Maybe we were quite young, but sometimes people just know what they want, right?”

She nodded, “of course, of course.”

They carried on walking for a few more moments in silence until they’d left the park and come out on a small side road lined with shops and bars.

“One more for the road?” Harry gestured at a little bar with some empty tables outside.

“Would be rude not to.” Ginny grinned, her cheeky smile back. They sat down at one of the tables and ordered two more glasses of wine, conversation returning to the more comfortable topics from earlier. After they had ordered one more glass of wine each, Harry excused himself to go to the bathroom. He went in through the front of the bar, the inside was small and dingy and there were a few small groups of people dotted around at tables chatting away in Greek, the sign for the toilets pointed to the very back corner behind some wooden screening so he headed over there, turning the corner to crash straight into a man coming out the other way.

“Shit, sorry!” He said at the same time the other man said “Syngnómi!”, and he looked up at the other man, meaning just to step around him but freezing on the spot.

“Sirius?”

The man was a bit taller than him, with dark hair tied up on top of his head in a bun. His skin was tanned olive and his eyes steel grey and he was definitely, Harry was 100% sure, Sirius Black. But he couldn’t be, because Sirius was dead, and this man was looking at him like he was a stranger in the bathroom of a random pub who had just walked into him and was now creepily gawping at him, because that was what he was doing. But he couldn’t move his feet.

“You ok?” Sirius, or the strange man, looked concerned. Harry supposed he must look like a lunatic so that made sense. He was speaking English now though.

Harry finally managed to stammer out some words.

“Sirius, how are you here?”

The man just looked confused.

“I think you might have me confused with someone else…” Even his voice was right, how could it be possible that this was anyone else. Maybe he was a little older… But then it had been 15 years so maybe he wasn’t old enough… It had to be him. When Harry didn’t say anything the other man seemed to give up and made a move to walk around him, Harry snapped his hand out and grabbed his arm. 

“Wait, Sirius, you must know me? It’s Harry! How are you here? Where have you been? Please talk to me.” Harry was pleading now and the man looked… maybe a little scared? Unnerved at least.

“Look, maybe you should sit a minute and calm down? You don’t look well…” 

Harry shook his head and realised he still had a vice grip on the other man’s arm, he let go and raised his hands apologetically.

“Sorry, I’m fine. I erm… you just look really like someone I used to know I guess. Too many glasses of wine maybe, I’m sorry.”

The man smiled and awkwardly waved a hand.

“Happens to the best of us. Well er… have a good one.” 

He almost darted around Harry in an effort to get away and ducked around a few people to go behind the bar and before disappearing through a door to a back room. Harry carried on into the bathroom, and sat down on the toilet, his ears ringing and his head spinning trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Obviously it wasn’t Sirius. It couldn’t be, for one that man clearly didn’t know him at all, and for another, Sirius had been dead for 15 years. And if he hadn’t been dead, what on Earth would he be doing hanging out in a random bar in Greece. But he had looked just like him… He even sounded just like him… He got up and splashed some water on his face and left to go back outside, he glanced over at the bar on the way past but he couldn’t spot him; although to be fair he was probably keeping out of sight of the crazy person who had accosted him on the way out of the loo.

“Harry? Is everything ok?” Ginny looked concerned.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, bit too much wine maybe, got a bit sleepy.” He was trying to focus on what she was saying but his mind was reeling. For a second he considered telling her what had happened but no… she’d think he was going mad. Or that he was drunk more likely. And that was probably what it was anyway, he was drunk and there was a man who had looked vaguely like Sirius and in some long delayed trauma type reaction he had imagined it was him and acted like a total basket case. That was almost definitely it, case closed.

To his relief, Ginny seemed to have gotten tired too and wanted to call it a night, so they paid up and headed back to their hotel, excusing the babysitter and thanking her. Once they’d made sure the kids were all sound asleep they returned to their own room, preparing for bed. Harry changed into a pair of boxers, putting them on back to front at first, and brushed half of his teeth before giving it up as a bad job and climbing into bed, staring at the ceiling and focusing really hard on not being a lunatic. After who knows how long of lying there he felt Ginny climb in next to him, she cuddled up to his side and stroked a hand down his chest, leaning over him and kissing him lightly on his lips. He kissed her back, trying to focus on the woman in front of him and forget about the weirdness. He sort of half succeeded. Ginny moved away from his lips and began to kiss down his neck, making her way down his chest and stomach and stroking her hand along his inner thigh. He started to think maybe he had actually had to much to drink, the ceiling was swimming uncomfortably in front of his eyes and he just couldn’t concentrate. Her hand was at his groin now, rubbing his cock through his boxer shorts, he felt a vague stirring and tried to just focus on that, on the sensation of her hand against him and felt relief when that technique seemed to be working, his cock starting to respond to her ministrations, and when she pulled his boxers off and replaced her hand with her mouth he was almost entirely distracted. Almost.

“Harry? Is this ok?” Ginny had pulled back a little after several minutes and was looking up at him questioningly, he was still barely half hard and suddenly realised that in his attempt to focus on what was going on he’d mostly just been lying still in complete silence and staring at the ceiling. He shook himself out of it.

“Yeah, of course, it feels great, sorry. Bit too much to drink maybe.” He pulled her back up to face level and moved spun them round so that he was on top of her looking down.

“Here, let me take care of you.” 

She looked like she was about to object or say something else but he didn’t give her the time, kissing her deeply before copying her move from earlier, kissing her neck and then down her chest, stopping to play with her nipples with his tongue as his hand moved between her thighs. She was hot and wet there, he teased her, moving his fingers around the spot he knew she wanted focus on, dipping a finger inside her before finally moving to circle her clit. Thankfully this seemed to have completely distracted her from whatever she had planned to say and when he looked up at her briefly her eyes were shut and she was breathing heavily.

He moved down further to her stomach, running his tongue along the sensitive line at the bottom before settling between her legs, setting to work with his tongue on her clit. 

“Oh god Harry… right there…” 

She wound her fingers through his hair and pushed him closer, and he sped up his actions, swirling his tongue and lightly sucking from time to time. He could feel her trying not to grind herself up against his face.

“So close…”

He pushed one finger inside her, curling it upwards to meet the sensitive spot inside. After more than 10 years together it wasn’t difficult to find it right away.

“Oh fuck, Harry…” 

Her thighs squeezed around his ears as her orgasm overtook her. He stayed put for a few seconds, gently kissing her now sensitive clit and making her twitch slightly. She laughed and pulled him up to face her. He kissed her again, lazily this time, their tongues flicking out to touch, and then rolled off her, wrapping an arm around her to pull her close into his side.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”

He shook his head, and kissed the top of her hair lightly.

“No no, it’s ok, I’m just a bit tired I think. Besides, I like looking after you, you deserve it.”

She signed and snuggled closer into him

“Ok, if you’re sure…”

She didn’t put up any more resistance and he was glad, this had happened a few times recently, more often than not if he was honest with himself. Granted usually it was work stress that was keeping him distracted rather than the possibility of having seen his dead godfather in a bar but still, the effect was much the same. He knew she worried about it but there wasn’t much he could do as far as he could see, and he was sure once they had a bit more time and space to relax the issue would resolve itself. He turned his mind once more to the man in the bar. He had probably just been being silly, he decided, he had had a few glasses of wine after all, and it was a bit dark. The man obviously had no idea who he was… and why should he if he was just a random stranger? No, he must have been imagining the likeness, or maybe he was a distant relation or something.

But still, he thought, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go back tomorrow, just in case.

———

The next day they’d taken the kids to walk around some ruins, which predictably they had no interest in whatsoever but Ginny had been interested in the stories; Harry probably would have been too if he hadn’t been completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. His preoccupation had almost led to Albus wondering off the edge of a crumbling wall and James stealing a passing woman’s bag because he’d seen her take a chocolate bar out of it and thought there may be another one. By the time they got back home in the evening and put the kids to bed Ginny was flustered and exhausted and wanted an early night, Harry agreed with her and made a bit of a show of tossing and turning for about half an hour before announcing he was having trouble sleeping and he was just going for a quick walk. Ginny was mostly asleep already so just grunted acknowledgement. 

He went straight to the bar they’d been at the night before, the man had gone behind the bar so it made sense that he probably worked there. There was always a chance he was working two nights running. Harry went inside to find a seat this time and sat at a table in the corner, trying to keep an eye on the bar without staring to obviously. There was a girl pouring drinks that he vaguely recognised from the night before but no one else, a quick glance around the rest of the place showed one other server who was chatting to a couple at another table but that wasn’t him either. Harry sighed internally, clearly this was a waste of time, also it probably counted as stalking. He was stalking some poor unsuspecting muggle while he should be in bed with his wife enjoying a holiday, clearly he was insane and more than a little pathetic. He decided to order a drink when the server came over anyway, might as well while he was there, and sat and drank it while contemplating how his life had got so comically sad. He finished his beer and the server came over and asked if he wanted another, he thought about it for a second before nodding and saying he would and then as an afterthought, as the server was starting to turn away he added:

“Hey you may know, was there someone else working here yesterday? Tall bloke, long hair?”

The server nodded “Sure, Mark, you know him?”

“Er…” Harry realised he wasn’t really sure where he had been planning on going with this. “Not really, we talked for a bit, I didn’t know if he worked here… I just wondered really erm… thanks.”

The server grinned slyly.

“Well he’s not working tonight but I think he said he was going to come in later to say hi anyway, if you wanted to stick around.”

“Oh erm… thanks that’s not… I mean, it’s fine. Thanks though.”

The server nodded and left, returning a few minutes later with Harry’s drink.

He sipped it slowly, considering, he decided he may as well stick around and finish this one but then he should definitely go back to the hotel. And if the man happened to turn up before then, then he would have another look at him but if not he would just forget about this whole ridiculous thing and carry on with his life. He had pretty much figured that that was how it was going to go when the man, “Mark” the other guy had called him, walked in. He grinned over at the girl behind the bar and slipped through, waving at a couple of man sitting at stools on the end who Harry supposed must be regulars. As he was chatting with the girl, the other male server who Harry had spoken to went over to them and leaned over the bar to chat too; and then, to Harry’s abject horror, he saw he was gesturing over at where Harry himself was sat.

“Oh shit.”

He wanted to look over and see what it looked like was being said but it would be too obvious so instead he stared into his glass at the small bit of beer remaining and swirled it around, hoping that by the time he looked up they would have passed the topic of the weirdo in the corner table who was asking about him and on to something unrelated and he would be able to sneak out before this became any more embarrassing. No such luck though.

“Hey, you were looking for me?”

Harry looked up and recognition dawned on the other man’s face.

“Oh it’s you! Um…”

“Sorry! I wasn’t looking for you as such, I was just here… and I wondered if you worked here. That was all. Er…”

He expected the other man would make an excuse and run off, hoped for it really, this was too awkward. Weirdly though he pulled out a seat across from Harry and sat down.

“No, it’s good, I actually hoped I’d run into you.”

Well this was unexpected, Harry looked across at the man properly, and his breath was knocked out of him all over again, it just couldn’t not be Sirius. He gaped at him dumbly, thankfully the other man had clearly realised he was a moron and decided to carry the conversation himself.

“You said you knew me from somewhere? And er… well I don’t remember you, well I didn’t at the time, and it took me by surprise but I was thinking on it today and I thought maybe I did know you? You seem sort of familiar at least, and I thought you may be able to help…”

“Help?” Harry almost patted himself on the back for managing to get a whole word out.

“Yeah… it probably sounds mad but, I have a bit of memory loss. Or quite a lot of memory loss actually. Like… most all of it, up until about 7 years back. It’s not… Well I didn’t know if maybe we’d met at some point before that and you could fill something in? It just… you seemed really shaken up so I thought…” he trailed off and Harry just sat in stunned silence.

“Or was it a drunk mix up type thing? Shit, it was, wasn’t it? And I’ve just come over here like a mental case rambling about memory loss. So smooth…”

He went to get up but Harry grabbed his wrist to stop him, and pulled him back down toward his seat. The other man, Mark, Sirius, whoever he was looked at him curiously.

“Sorry…” Harry stammered out. “Just give me a second, I’m… I guess I’m just processing.”

The other man nodded slowly.

“You don’t remember anything at all?”

“Nope. Well some stuff, but it’s foggy, nothing helpful, maybe shapes and some sounds and that if I strain really hard. I just… woke up, miles from here actually, there’s a little town and this river… I was there for a while and then I came up here to find work. I figured at first I must live nearby and someone I knew would come looking but no one did and I didn’t remember anything, so I just carried on I guess.”

“7 years ago?”

“Yeah around then.”

That didn’t make any sense, Sirius had been gone much longer than that, and why would he just appear by a river somewhere near a small town in Greece? None of this made any sense at all. But yet… it had to be him, it just had to be, everything about him was so exactly Sirius. Yes his face was the same and his eyes were the same, he looked much healthier and happier than when Harry had last seen him, but his voice and the way he moved his hands about when he talked… Harry couldn’t look at him and believe it wasn’t him.

“I used to know you, yeah, years before that though. You were… friends with my parents.” He stopped short of saying “my godfather”, that just felt a bit too intense.

“Your parents? Ah ok… So we didn’t know each other so well then I guess.”

Harry shrugged, “We knew each other pretty well, for a little while anyway.”

The other man leaned back in his chair a little and blew his cheeks out, seemingly taking it in.

“Fuck that’s weird. And you’re sure?”

Harry nodded.

“Yeah, I’m definitely sure.” And he was.

———


	2. When Harry Met Fergus

_June 18th 2003_

The first thing he was aware of when he woke up was the glaring sun when he tried to open his eyes, the second was that he was being shaken by the shoulder and someone was speaking to him. It was rude of them to wake him up but then since he seemed to have gone to sleep on a pile of stones he supposed he couldn’t blame them really…

Slowly he opened his eyes fully, squinting against the blinding light and looking around for the source of the voice. A group of people was leaning over him, five of them in total, he thought they looked… concerned maybe? 

“He’s waking up!”

“Does he speak English? Should I fetch Nik?”

“I don’t know, shh… yeah get him maybe.”

He tried to open his mouth to say something, to let them know that he did speak English maybe, but his mouth was as dry as sandpaper and all that came out was a sort of rasping croak.

“Shh he’s trying to say something!”

He tried again, just about managing to force out the word “water”. One of the group, a youngish man with sandy blonde hair rushed to get a flask out of his bag and handed it over, he drank as if he hadn’t in years. Maybe he hadn’t… he couldn’t really think straight right now. 

He looked around, he was sat on the bank of a river, lined at the side with white stones and trees. The water was clear and the sky was a beautiful blue colour and everything around seemed peaceful. And he had no idea what he was doing there.  
The group of people had clearly decided at this point that he wasn’t about to die or anything and had calmed down a little, and one that had run off to fetch someone returned with sixth man. He drank the water and tried to cast his mind back to what he had been doing before he apparently fell asleep on the bank of a river in the middle of the day, but there was nothing. If he strained his mind as hard as he could he could remember some flashed of light, maybe there was some shouting, he tried to remember anything else at all but there was nothing, and he started to panic a little. 

“Mr? Mr... what’s your name? Are you from round here?” One of the group, a kindly faced woman with a curly blonde hair that made a cloud around her head was speaking to him. 

He tried and tried to think, it was such a simple question, of course he must know the answer. But he just couldn’t quite grasp at it.

“I don’t know.”

The group looked at each other, the concern now fully returned to their faces. The sixth man who had returned took control, helping him up by the arm and starting to lead him up the bank away from the river, he didn’t seem anywhere near as surprised by his presence as the others did. He gave instructions to the others, mostly in English but sometimes in a language that he didn’t understand. He found himself being loaded into the back seat of a car, squashed between one of the other strangers and a window. Now that he was up and moving around he noticed that his head was throbbing, really quite a lot, and the light was still horribly bright. He also appeared to not be dressed for at all the right weather- all the others in the car were wearing shorts and t-shirts and he seemed to be wearing some sort of robe… He watched more scenery pass by out the window, it half occurred to him that he should be concerned about who these people were and where they were taking him but then what really could he do about it anyway? Eventually the car pulled up outside a small yellow house, they seemed to have come into a little town. The man who had taken charge before told them all to stay where they were and he disappeared into the house, reappearing moments later with a small, older woman who he seemed to be arguing with about something, or maybe they weren’t arguing, they were still talking as they opened his side door but it was in that other strange language again so really they could have been saying anything.

The woman turned to him and gabbled something at him that he thought was probably a question, but he had no idea so he just looked at her blankly. 

“He’s English I think.” The other man supplied.

The woman made a tutting sound.

“Ναί, Ναί, where are you from?” She asked him, “What is your name?” 

He shook his head.

“I don’t know.” He knew as he said it again that it was a ridiculous thing to not know and she must think he was mad but she didn’t seem surprised.

“Ay, they sent us another. It’s been years, I was beginning to think… But no matter… Come with me then boy.”

He sort of felt he should object to being called boy, he was sure he wasn’t young. But then maybe he was… And that seemed rude anyway, so he just followed behind her quietly into the yellow house. Feeling baffled, and more than a bit scared, and mostly just very glad someone was telling him what to do.

———

The old woman’s name was Carla, the other man who it turned out was her nephew was Niko. She had quickly settled him in, fetched him some less weird clothes and sat him down to eat some soup. It was only once he’d started eating that he realised he was starving. As she moved around the kitchen she peppered him with questions, not seeming concerned that he didn’t know the answers to any of them. Sometimes he thought he almost had an answer but they were just out of reach. She’d given him a bed to sleep in that night and the next and the next, and once she had decided he was strong enough she sent him out to do jobs for her, mostly just fetching things, but she had a little store that she ran in town so sometimes she left him to work there. He didn’t really have anything else to be doing so he just mostly did what he was told. Slowly he began to know some of the locals, they didn’t seem too shocked by the appearance of a strange man who had woken up by the river, he’d asked Nik about that and he’d sort of vaguely shrugged and said that “it happens”. When it began to get tedious telling people he didn’t remember his name they gave him a new one and he became Mark. He started to be able to learn some of the language and help Nik on his tours of the nearby river, although he didn’t like to get too close.

And that was how he lived for nearly a year, and he was happy. Carla often tutted that wherever he had been before he clearly hadn’t been eating properly and made it her mission to feed him up and after a short time of eating well and keeping active out in the sun he began to feel strong. He didn’t remember why but he knew it had been a while since he’d felt that way. At first, Nik had talked about how they might find people who knew him. They knew he was from England, that much was obvious, but without a name it was near impossible and besides, he found himself not overly keen on finding answers. Although he couldn’t remember his life before, every now and then he could feel something coming back and a lot of it felt… dark. He had his fair share of scars littered across his body and after all, if no one had come looking for him then surely he couldn’t really have been leaving all that much behind… He was happy here, why not leave it at that.

About a year in, Nik had announced he was leaving to a city some miles away, that one of his friends was opening a bar there and that he wanted to get out and see somewhere new. He asked Mark to come with him, told him that it would be fun and he couldn’t just stay in Carla’s house forever, and he thought maybe he was right about that. So off they went.

———

Six more years passed, and as time went by it mattered less and less that Mark didn’t remember who he was before. He had a job, he had friends, Carla wrote him letters and he’d send her postcards and bits of sweets he knew she liked and it was a good life. So when the strange man had bumped into him at the bar and seemed to know him it had really thrown off his otherwise very normal day. There had been something very strange about the look in his eyes, and something… recognisable about him. He’d tried to casually mention it to Nik that morning over breakfast but had completely failed at casual when Abigail, Nik’s girlfriend had overhead and gone into excitement overdrive.

“What if he actually knew you though?? From before? Don’t you want to find out?”

Mark shrugged and played around with his cereal a little.

“Not really… I’m just here now aren’t I?”

Abby was not at all satisfied with that as an answer.

“But what if there’s family you haven’t seen in years and they’re missing you? What if you’re a secret billionaire? What if your real name is Fergus? Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re actually called Fergus?”

Nik laughed and shook his head.

“No one wants to remember that they’re called Fergus.”

Abigail ignored him entirely, her focus still on Mark.

“But seriously, how could you not want to know?”

“He was probably just smashed Abs, he probably just had a mate at school who had roughly my hair colour and thought that was who I was.” He didn’t really believe that though, although he didn’t know why. Something about the man’s eyes maybe.

“But what if he wasn’t?”

“I mean… he definitely was smashed…”

She threw a bit of toast at him.

“What if he did know you though? Don’t you want to know at all?”

“Not really.” He sighed, “I know that probably seems weird Abs but really, what am I missing? I’ve got everything I need and if I ever had some big happy family and a load of friends… well it’s not like they came looking did they.”

He ducked another piece of toast that had been flung at his head.

“They might just have not known where to look!”

“Well it’s irrelevant anyway, it’s not like I’m just going to run into him in the loos again is it?”

Abigail seemed to concede this argument was at least a little valid.

“Ok but what if you did? Not in the loos but… if you did run into him, what would you ask?”

“I’d definitely start with ‘is my name Fergus?’ mate, because if that ones a yes you know for sure you don’t want to know anything else.” Nik dodged the toast before it had even left Abby’s hand, they’d been living together for three years now, he was a pro toast dodger at this point.

Mark laughed and carried on with his cereal and the conversation thankfully moved on to other topics. But he kept thinking about it through the day; what would he ask? Not that it mattered really, he wasn’t likely to run into the guy again. Probably for the best really.

———

Having sat down across from Harry, and having seemed reasonably confident for the first few minutes of their conversation, the man that was or wasn’t Sirius seemed to have run out of steam a little. He kept opening his mouth as if he was about to ask something before shutting it again. Harry for his part had absolutely no idea where to go from here. How do you go about telling a total stranger that actually they are a wizard, and your godfather, and an ex con, and they can change into a dog… oh and actually they’re meant to have been dead for the last 15 years. He opened his mouth to try and say something, anything to break the silence when thankfully Sirius finally broke it for him.

“Is my name actually Fergus?”

Harry blinked.

“What?”

Sirius waved his hand.

“Sorry, stupid question, it just fell out. Something my friend said…”

“Oh… ok…”

“But what was my name though? Or is? That seems like a safe enough thing to know…”

“Your name is Sirius.”  
Sirius screwed up his nose, not looking impressed at all.

“Really? Well that’s… slightly better than Fergus I suppose. Not much mind… And what’s yours?”

“Harry.” Harry felt himself swallowing back a lump in his throat at having to have this conversation. How could he really just not remember?

“Harry.” Sirius nodded, seeming to like that better. “Yeah I guess you kind of look like a Harry. I guess I must be miles older than you then? If I was friends with your parents?”

“Er yeah I’m 30 so I guess you’re… around 50 now?” Although looking at Sirius he had to admit he definitely didn’t look 50. Sirius looked extremely dismayed at that.

“50? Well shit, we’ve been assuming I’m early 40s. Won’t be telling Nik that one…”

Harry wondered briefly who Nik was but not for long, now Sirius seemed to have got into his question asking stride.

“And where was I from? Like originally? We’ve been assuming England but whereabouts? And did I have like… family or anything?” He seemed a bit more tentative about the last question, as if he wasn’t quite sure he really wanted to know.

“Well… you lived in London when I knew you, you grew up there. And you didn’t really have family…” Just me, Harry thought, but didn’t say. That too seemed like it would fall in the too intense for a first meeting category. “But you had some friends.”

Sirius paused for a second before he asked another question, hesitantly.

“And was I… happy? Like, did I have stuff going on? A job? I don’t remember much but sometimes I think… well sometimes it seems like maybe I don’t want to know…”

Harry just looked at him for a minute as he pondered how best to answer, Sirius’ eyes were almost silver in the light, he didn’t remember them being so expressive, but maybe they hadn’t been, back then. He had a few extra wrinkles around his eyes but they looked like lines from laughing. Suddenly Harry felt wrong for being here; whatever had happened to end up with Sirius here he was obviously doing miles better than he had been before, he was better off now, without him, and Harry had no right… But he knew he wasn’t really going to walk away.

“I think… things were hard back then. I don’t think many of us were really happy. And you went through some pretty hard stuff…” he trailed off but Sirius was nodding, he looked like that was pretty much the answer he had expected. Harry searched his brain for something else he could say that didn’t make Sirius’ old life sound totally dire but he had to concede it pretty much just was. Fortunately he was interrupted by the server from before turning up again, grinning from ear to ear.

“Can I get you anything?”

Before Harry could say anything Sirius turned to him.

“Piss off Nik.”

“Charming…” the server, Nik apparently smirked.

“Sorry I meant, piss off Nik but also bring us a beer?”

“Ok Fergus, whatever you say.” Nik sauntered off but did return a minute later with two beers.

“Here. But only because you’re going to tell me all about this at home.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and handed one of the drinks to Harry.  
“Sorry about him.”

“Oh it’s fine…” Harry stammered. “He’s your…?”

“Housemate. I met him just after I… woke up? I guess. I kind of just followed him here and we’ve been living together ever since. His girlfriend lives with us now so its a bit crowded but she’s a sweetheart, and I like to have people around.”

Harry nodded.

“So tell me about you then? We’ve established I lived a miserable life that I probably don’t want to know about, have a ridiculous name and am about 10 years older than I’ve been assuming, what’s your deal? You obviously don’t live round here…”

“No, no I’m here on holiday with… _shit!_ ” He had completely forgotten that he’d just told Ginny he was going for a walk to help him sleep and he’d been gone for nearly two hours and was on his third beer.

Sirius chuckled.

“Who’s that then?”

Harry rubbed his face with his hand.

“My wife, I left her in bed and told her I was going for a walk two hours ago.”

“Any chance she’s just been sleeping and hasn’t noticed?”

“Possibly…” It wasn’t likely, Ginny had been a light sleeper since they’d had the kids.

“Well, if she’s annoyed now she’ll probably still be annoyed in half an hour once you’ve finished that…” Sirius gestured towards the drink in Harry’s hand.

Harry thought he was probably right, plus Ginny would have to understand if he explained it, now the initial panic moment had died away he thought it probably didn’t matter too much. And he couldn’t leave Sirius here, not now.

“Yeah, you’re right, what’s one more…”

So he stayed, and told Sirius about his (edited) life. It was surprisingly easy to talk about his job as if he was a muggle police officer. He told him about his kids and Ginny and about his parents, telling about them Sirius when he had once known so much more about them than he did about them felt bizarre. Then Sirius told him about the last 7 years, about Nik and Carla and the river, and the bar. And then they just… chatted, about things that had nothing to do with either of them especially and before Harry knew it Nik was back, telling them the bar was closing and they had to clear out. Sirius looked surprised at the time too.

“How long are you around for?”

“Another week, 10 days ish.”

“Well maybe you could come by again? If your wife doesn’t murder you that is.”

“That would be good, I’ll erm… I mean are you always here?”

“Most days but, here… you got a phone?”

Harry actually did have a phone which he very occasionally used but he didn’t have it on him.

“I do but it’s in my room.”

“Ok, give us your hand then.” Harry held out his hand, slightly confused, and Sirius grabbed a pen from behind the bar and held his hand still, scrawling a phone number on the back. “Stick that in your phone when you get back and drop me a message. I’m usually around though.” 

Harry nodded, a massive dopey grin on his face. His hand felt warm where Sirius had held it to write the number. He took one last long look at his godfather, drinking him in and revelling in the fact that he was actually there, actually real. Before he could stop himself he’d taken a step towards him and wrapped him in a hug, hoping and praying Sirius wouldn’t be terrified.

Luckily Sirius just chuckled and to Harry’s surprise squeezed him back briefly before stepping away. He looked at Harry with a strange look in his eyes that Harry couldn’t quite place.

“Right, well I’ll see you around then Harry.”

Harry walked back to the hotel in a daze, barely noting which way he was going until he opened the door and walked in the room.

“It’s 2:30am, where the fuck have you been??”

Oops…

———


	3. Birthday Bananas (And Shaving Cream)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think I'm going to try and aim to update this at weekends after this one, I seem to have written a lot of words of this and not very many words of the essays i'm actually meant to be writing...

Ginny had been, unsurprisingly, livid. Turns out leaving to go on a short night time walk and coming back hours later and several beers down with someone’s phone number scrawled on the back of his hand didn’t go over particularly well. It hadn’t immediately made it better once he’d started trying to explain about Sirius either because to start with she definitely thought it was either an extremely tasteless but creative lie he was making up to get out of trouble, or he’d gone totally mad. Eventually he’d managed to talk her round enough to actually listen to him and she’d let him explain about Sirius, and the bar, and the missing memories but he could tell she still didn’t really believe him which was fair, he supposed, he didn’t really think he would have believed it either. He still couldn’t help feeling resentful of the pitying look she had given him though, like he was some poor orphan child who needed sympathy. 

As soon as they’d finished arguing then discussing the whole thing, Harry had dug out his phone, put it on charge (the battery had been completely dead for ages, he didn’t even really know why he’d brought it with him) and saved Sirius’ number, paranoid that if he didn’t do it right away he’d accidentally wash it off or something and then just never be able to track him down again. This was probably excessive worry since he knew where he worked but it had been 15 years after all…

He waited a little while the next morning before texting him, not wanting to seem like a total lunatic, but only lasted until about 10am and then spent the next half hour after that stressing that he’d came off sounding like a teenage girl. It didn’t help when Ginny pointed out that his obsessive phone checking and rereading made him _look_ very much like a teenage girl. But maybe he shouldn’t have messaged to meet up so soon? After all, Sirius lived here, he probably actually had a life. And he didn’t really know Harry from any random stranger in the street… He nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone buzzed in his pocket and Ginny rolled her eyes as he pulled it out again for probably the fiftieth time.

_Hey :) Tonight? I’m not working though so maybe somewhere that isn’t the bar? Contrary to how it may seem I don’t actually live there._

The phone buzzed a second time.

_ok maybe I slightly live there… but I’m trying to cut back_

Harry grinned and replied.

**Sounds great, any recommendations?**

_Yeah, I’ll work something out. Let you know in a bit_

“Well? What’s he saying?” Ginny was waiting for him to fill her in, he’d agreed that next time he met with Sirius they should both go along. She tactfully said it was because she’d really like to see him but it was clearly really to check how insane he had actually gone.

“He says he can do tonight.”

Ginny grimaced slightly.

“Harry we can’t get a babysitter in time for tonight…”

“Shit sorry, I didn’t think…” 

She saw the crestfallen look on his face and sighed.

“I’ll ask at the hotel and see if they can help, if not then I guess you just go along and I’ll take the kids. We’ll just have to arrange something else another day.”

He flung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her soundly on the cheek, earning an “ewwww!” from James, who had recently decided any physical contact between his parents was disgusting and an echoing sentiment and a giggle from Albus who mostly just liked to copy anything and everything his brother did. Harry determined to make a concentrated effort to take on as much of the kid responsibility for the rest of the day as he could to make it up to her and so spent a huge amount of time that afternoon running around pretending to be various monsters and modes of transport. When they asked back at the hotel they confirmed that a babysitter wouldn’t be possible at such short notice and Harry did his best impression of being really disappointed, feeling only a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t really at all. He hadn’t seen his godfather in 15 years, he didn’t really think he had to feel guilty about wanting to spend some time just the two of them. He kissed Ginny goodbye and set off to the address Sirius had messaged him.

The place they were meeting at was a different bar, at the edge of a park, Harry spotted Sirius already sitting at one of the little tables as he approached; he already had a beer in front of him and was playing around on his phone. He looked up as Harry approached and waved and smiled, and Harry found himself grinning back in what he was sure was an insane looking way, but he couldn’t help it, it was _Sirius_. And his smile was so infectious, Harry wondered at how it seemed to light up his entire face.

“Hey!” Sirius got up and gave him a brief, one-armed hug which took Harry by surprise.

“Hey, you been here long?”

“Nah, was just a few minutes early, had to go to the shops and then there wasn’t really time to go back so I just… sorry, it’s not interesting.” He had sort of gestured to a bag by his feet which looked to Harry to be full of cans of shaving foam.

“That’s… a lot of of shaving foam.”

“Yeah, it’s a few, I think I need a couple more but they only had 11 in the store…” Sirius was acting like this was a completely normal amount to purchase.

“Ok… why do you need 11 cans of shaving foam?”

“Oh, it’s Nik’s birthday coming up.” He was still acting like this was totally self-explanatory but Harry thought he could make out a tiny smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

“Of course, who doesn’t want 11 cans of shaving foam for their birthday? It’s what I ask for every year.”

“Basically, we don’t really do birthdays, but a few years ago I ate a banana Nik had wanted on a day a few weeks before mine, well my waking up day anyway, and I woke up on the day of and he’d put bananas everywhere. I kept laying in bananas and treading on them and finding them in my food for ages after, it was just gross. And I knew he was expecting me to get him back his next birthday after that so I’ve waited a few years but last week he definitely used my shaving foam so…” Sirius shrugged as if the rest was self explanatory. “I’m thinking I’ll probably start with his shoes.”

They spent a while planning out the more creative places Sirius could put the shaving foam around the flat, the suggestions getting more and more ridiculous until they finally reached what Sirius declared was “too far” (shaving foam ice cream- this was apparently offensive to the good name of ice cream), and Harry’s face hurt from laughing. That did make Sirius decide that they needed ice cream though so they took a walk down to a cafe a short distance away that he insisted had the best ice cream ever. Although he had to concede his ice cream experience was limited to places in the city as he didn’t actually remember having ice cream before coming there. 

They took a seat and the waitress came over to take their order. Harry couldn’t help noticing that the waitress seemed much more interested in talking to Sirius than she did in moving on to any of the other tables, her smile was extra bright and she seemed to giggling an awful lot. He couldn’t blame her really, Sirius was really quite ridiculously good looking. He remembered having thought so all those years before when he had seen him in Snape’s pensive and getting older hadn’t really dulled his looks much at all now that the hanging shadow from Azkaban and the years on the run had left him. Sirius was being perfectly charming but otherwise seemed a bit oblivious to the waitresses attention, as she turned to leave she brushed her hand against his arm.

Harry waited until she was out of earshot.

“She fancied you.”

Sirius waved a hand dismissively.

“Don’t be daft.”

She did!”

“Well… maybe. But she’s not my type really.”

Harry snorted, “what, too pretty for you?”

Sirius eyed him cautiously, suddenly a bit more serious looking than he had been so far since they’d been talking.

“No, more a bit too female for me…”

Harry sort of gaped, momentarily lost for words. 

“Oh… oh! Sorry, I didn’t realise… Not that it matters of course, I just…” He had just thought that was something he would have known.

Sirius looked thoughtful.

“I guess I wasn’t too open about it before then?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I guess I just never asked. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be weird about it…”

Sirius waved away his apologies.

“It’s fine, no drama llama.”

Harry snorted, “what?”

“Oh I don’t know, it’s something Abby says. You know how these things get stuck in your head if you hear them enough.”

And with that the subject had passed.

They didn’t talk much about _before_ for the rest of the night, which Harry was sort of grateful for in a way; it was hard to recount history and miss out all the wizarding world details and he much preferred listening to Sirius chatter about his friends and life and all other random manner of things that came into his head. Sirius for his part seemed to be a bit cautious around what he actually wanted to know, although Harry supposed him having basically told him that his life was miserable and he’d had nothing much going on the night before probably hadn’t really sold it all that well. The before time didn’t come up again until after they had left the bar, Sirius had insisted on walking back to the hotel with him (apparently it was on his way home but Harry wasn’t sure about that), and had been a bit quieter for a few minutes than he had been the rest of the night.

“This is me.” Harry gestured as they arrived outside the hotel.

“Great, good… well I’ll chat to you soon?”

Harry nodded emphatically. 

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Ok cool.” Sirius smiled, and then seemed like he was about to say something else but stopped.

“What’s up?” Harry asked.

“Nothing really… I just wondered… But it doesn’t matter.”

“Well you have to tell me now, I’m curious.”

Sirius laughed.

“No, it’s nothing exciting, I just wondered, I mean I must have disappeared right? Gone off on holiday and not come back or something… did you… or anyone I guess, did anyone look?” Sirius looked so awkward and kind of sad all of a sudden and Harry had the strongest urge to just reach out and hug him until he smothered him.

He couldn’t think of anything else that would explain it so he just told him the truth. Well, sort of the truth.

“We thought you died. We were really sure about it so… There was kind of a fight, and people saw you… I don’t know how you got here, but we all thought you’d died 15 years ago.”

“Oh…” Sirius seemed a bit lost for words. “Well… I mean I guess that’s better than I just went on holiday and no one noticed I didn’t come back…”

“Sirius, if I’d had any idea you were out there somewhere there’s no way I would have stopped looking.” Sirius had been looking down and shuffling his feet but just then he looked up and met Harry’s eyes and Harry had a sudden lurching feeling in his belly, like he’d just fallen off something high. He looked a bit down still, but less so, and Harry really hoped he believed him. They just stared at each other for an awkward moment, Harry somehow unable to tear his eyes away, until Sirius broke the silence.

“15 years though, that’s mad, I only remember 7.”

Harry laughed awkwardly.

“Yeah… weird…” Then it occurred to him that actually that was pretty weird. He was sure Sirius had mentioned that he’d been here about that long before but it just hadn’t been the most salient information at the time.

“When did you get here? Or when is it exactly you remember from?”

“2003. June 18th specifically, that’s my “birthday”.” 

Harry was silent again for a second, but this time he was thinking. That was really strange. Although… was it really any stranger than the fact Sirius was here at all? Probably not. He would put it in his things to work out later pile for now.

“Anyway, you should be getting in, don’t want the wife wondering where you’ve got to again.”

“Yeah, course, um… well, I’ll see you?”

Sirius nodded and smiled.

“Yeah, definitely. Just message me.”

He gave him another brief hug and Harry watched as he disappeared down the street.

———

Harry ended up seeing Sirius a few times over the next week, one of the times they even managed to get a babysitter and Ginny came along too, obviously beyond stunned to find out that it was indeed Sirius and her husband wasn’t actually having a delayed mental breakdown from the trauma of losing all his parental figures. The other times it was just the two of them; Harry could tell Ginny wasn’t overly impressed that he kept disappearing all evening and leaving her with the kids when they were on a family holiday but she didn’t say anything, if ever there was an exceptional circumstance he thought this was probably it. 

It was weird to him that spending time with Sirius wasn’t weird at all; he realised quite quickly that they’d never actually spent much time just the two of them before, but they never seemed to run out of things to talk about and he felt like he spent all his time laughing. The only awkwardness was trying to avoid details about magic but he was getting quite good at that and Sirius didn’t ask much about his old life. Harry did feel a little guilty when he told the half truths but also… well the man had just found out his real name a week ago, you couldn’t pile too much on at once. And also Harry had a suspicion that it might scare him off. 

Ginny had insisted that they fire call Hermione about the whole thing and get her to do some digging into what might have happened- she got on well with some of the people in the Department of Mysteries- and Harry had agreed under the condition that Hermione made her enquiries non specific; he didn’t like to think what would happen if word got out that Sirius Black was alive and well and living as a muggle in Greece and he certainly didn’t want to be the one responsible for that mess. Hermione had, unsurprisingly, been stunned but in predictable Hermione fashion had quickly made a research plan and ensured them that she would look into it right away, before adding that they absolutely must update her when they got back.

And now the “when they got back” was getting very close, they were leaving tomorrow and Harry couldn’t get rid of the knot in his stomach.

Ginny had reluctantly agreed that he would go for one last drink with Sirius tonight, once they’d got the kids fed and into bed, and she would sort out the packing. Harry had just finished reading Lily a story and tucked her in and come back into their room, Ginny was removing her makeup in the bathroom. He sat on the bed and weighed up the thoughts that had been cycling through his head all day.

“Gin?”

She stuck her head out of the bathroom.

“Yes?”

He sucked up a breath and went for it.

“Would it be insane do you think… I mean, if I asked if Sirius wanted to come back with us. Would that be mad?”

She came out of the bathroom and sat next to him on the bed, placing a gentle hand on his knee. She had that sympathetic look on her face again that he wasn’t a big fan of.

“Yes Harry, I think that would be mental.”

He felt a sudden wave of anger at her and stood up.

“Whatever, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Ginny sighed, resignedly.

“But you did, and you must have known what I’d say. Harry he lives here! His life is here, what’s he going to do, come back to London and live in our spare room? There’s no one he was close to there anymore.”

“I’d be there! And he could make a life there, there’s loads of people he knew still! And he can always come back here and visit, we’re wizards for Merlin’s sake!”

“Which he doesn’t even know! Harry, you’re living in a dream world here, I know it’s meant a lot to you to spend time with him but he’s happy here, you can’t just try and uproot his whole life because you want your godfather back.”

He knew she was right, and that was the most frustrating thing. How reasonable and correct about the whole thing she was just somehow made him more angry. He’d lost Sirius before and now he’d found him and he was going to have to leave him again and the whole thing just made him want to scream. And he knew it wasn’t the same, and he could visit and they could write and he’d still _be here_ … but it was just so unfair.

“Harry…” Ginny was still using the same calm, sympathetic voice. “I’m so happy for you that he’s back, really I am, and you’ll still be able to talk and see each other sometimes… But it’s time to go home, and get back to your life and your family! We can’t just pick someone up in Greece and move them into our house. And I really don’t think that’s what Sirius would want either.”

Harry turned away from her nodded tersely, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

“Right, sure, you’re right. I’m just… I’ll be back later ok?”

He grabbed his wallet and room key and left quickly before she had much of a chance to say anything else. It was only 10 minutes walk to the bar and by the time he got there, he still hadn’t really calmed down at all so he stood for a few moments outside, trying to get a handle on himself. Once he was sure he wasn’t about to throw something or burst into tears he headed inside.

Sirius was working this evening, when he saw Harry he smiled and held up a finger to say he’d be one minute, as he finished off serving an older man at the end of the bar a beer. He said something to the girl who was also working which she nodded to and he ducked out from behind the bar to join Harry where he was sat, grabbing two bottles of beer as he went past the fridge.

“Hey you,” Sirius looked extra cheerful this evening and Harry felt his anger ebb away a little more. “Mandy says she’ll cover me so I’ve got an hour break.” He handed one of the beers to Harry.

“That’s nice of her.”

“Not really, I covered a whole shift for her last week because she had a two day hangover so she owed me one. Works out the same though.” He took a swig of his beer and grinned at Harry. “So you all packed and stuff? Flight’s tomorrow right?”

“Er no, Gin’s doing it though tonight.”

“Lucky you.” He nudged Harry with his shoulder. Harry smiled half heartedly in agreement and took a sip of beer. Sirius clearly noticed his lack of enthusiasm.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Harry shrugged.

“Nothing really, just had a bit of a row before I came out I guess.”

“Was it because you’re just so cheery and fun today?”

Harry threw a glare his way, he didn’t especially appreciate being made fun of. It was hard to be too annoyed though, it was too obviously light hearted.

“Whatever, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Ok well let's talk about something else then. You looking forward to getting back to real life tomorrow?” It was too much like what Ginny had said and Harry started to get pissed off again, but this time he was mostly just really really sad. He tried to keep it in though, if he just had one more hour to sit here and have a drink and chat shit with Sirius he didn’t want to spend it talking about leaving, and he definitely didn’t want Sirius to see him cry which he felt like he was dangerously close to doing.

“Not especially, it’s just… y’know… work and stuff. Not going to be so fun.”

Sirius had started to look actually concerned now.

“Harry, you look like you’re about to go off and be executed. Listen, if the row with Ginny was that bad you can go back and make up with her, I don’t mind, really.”

Harry shook his head.

“No it’s not that, we’re fine, really.”

“Yeah, you look fine, just excellent, in that ‘someone just murdered my dog’ kind of way.”

Harry sighed and gave up, they were clearly having this conversation.

“It’s just… I just found you right? And it’s been great, spending time and that, and now I’m going and I’m… I’m just going to miss you is all. I know I’m being silly…”

Sirius looked a bit startled for a second before recovering himself and leaning in a bit to Harry’s side, putting an arm round the back of his chair. It was comforting in a way and it made Harry want to lean up against him.

“Hey… Harry, look at me a second.” Harry looked up at his face, he was closer than he had been and Harry found himself distracted by how long his eyelashes were and how much his eyes shone. “It’s not silly, ok? I’m going to miss you too, this has all been insane but I love hanging out with you. But we’ll still talk, right? And you can visit. Hey, maybe I can even branch out and come to London some time. You can show me the Tower of London or something.” He shook Harry gently with the arm round his back and Harry gave a weak smile.

“I know. It’s just not the same… and I spoke to Ginny about you coming back and she said I was being mental and I just got pissed off.”

Sirius chuckled lightly.

“Well you were being mental, Harry you know I’m not going to move, I live here.”

For some reason when Sirius said it it didn’t make him mad. It made him feel horribly sad sure, but it was just so obvious.

“I know, I know.”

Sirius gave him a quick squeeze and then moved his arm, Harry felt strangely cold without it there.

“Come on, cheer up and have a drink with me, you can write poems about how much you miss me the whole flight home.”

Harry laughed and gave him a shove, almost pushing him off his stool and it was almost like things were back to normal. The hour passed quickly and Sirius stayed longer, only surrendering to going back to work when Mandy started pointedly staring daggers at him across the bar.

“Ok, I really should get back over there or she’s going to skin me.”

He walked Harry outside to say goodbye and pulled him into a tight hug as soon as they got out to the road, talking into Harry’s hair.

“Message me when you get back ok? And then just all the time after that.” 

Harry laughed and squeezed him back.

“All the time. And come visit soon.” 

He felt Sirius nod against his head. They stayed that way for another few seconds before Sirius pulled back a little and looked at Harry. He had a piece of hair that had escaped from his hair tie and Harry felt the strongest urge to reach up and tuck it away behind his ear… They were still so close and Harry could see the flecks of darker grey in his eyes, and that he had a freckle by his nose, he’d never noticed that before which was weird, he felt like he’d spent a huge amount of time staring at Sirius just lately. 

Sirius gave a sort of half cough and moved away, breaking their gaze; he gave Harry’s arm one last light squeeze and then they were separate again and Harry felt a little dazed. 

“Right… go on then before I get all weird and mushy. I should get back to work.”

Harry nodded reluctantly.

“Yeah ok, I should get back too. But I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Sirius grinned.

“You will. And just so often after that that you’ll be completely sick of me.”

Harry laughed and waved him off back into the bar. He secretly doubted it though, he didn’t really see how anyone would get sick of Sirius Black.


	4. The Mystery of the Vanishing Pan

Harry’s first few days back home had been mostly filled with catching up on the millions of memos that he’d missed and no one had done anything with while he’d been gone. He’d ended up being in the office until past 10pm for the whole week, much to Ginny’s chagrin. He’d messaged Sirius as promised pretty much as soon as he’d landed back in London and they had just in fairly constant communication since then. 

Ron had obviously been updated on the situation by Hermione as soon as she’d been told because he’d turned up at Harry’s office bearing coffee and demanding to know what had gone only a couple of hours after he’d gotten in. Harry had let him stay and told him all about it on the proviso that he helped him get through some of the paperwork. It was good to talk to him, something about Ron’s specific brand of humour always helped him destress a bit.

By the Friday, he had pretty much surrendered to the fact he was going to be behind until the end of time and agreed to go out with Hermione for lunch. Hermione was always very busy herself, she’d recently been promoted within the Department for the Regulation for Magical Creatures and she (unsurprisingly) took her job very seriously, but they did usually manage to get out for lunch once a week still. 

She arrived, a few minutes after the time she had said she’d meet him, scattering aurors on her way through the floor.

“I’m so sorry I’m late! I had a nightmare getting up here.”

Harry laughed.

“Four minutes really doesn’t qualify as late Hermione.”

“I said one, it’s after one, that’s late.”

“Well you’re forgiven, come on.” He tipped his head towards the door and she followed him out, making small talk as they headed out through the foyer, and eventually onto the street outside.

“How was your holiday? The weather must have been glorious this time of year, Ron and I had been meaning to go to Greece for years you know but with Rose and now Huge, it’s finding the time…”

Harry nodded in agreement.

“It was good. The weather was great, and the kids liked it I think…” He trailed off and Hermione looked at him expectantly.

“Oh what do you want me to say Hermione? The whole thing was a total mindfuck, I’m still not entirely sure I didn’t imagine it.”

“Did you get to speak with him much?

“Yeah, some.”

“And he doesn’t remember anything at all?”

“He said he had some vague images but no, not really anything at all.”

They arrived at the cafe they were headed to and found a table. Harry had a few favourites that he tended to stick to, out of the way of the bits of London more frequented by the wizarding population; he could do with eating his lunch without people ogling him.

“You said you may know someone in the Department of Mysteries who might know something?” Harry wasn’t sure really whether he cared about how Sirius had got back, given that he had, but it seemed like the thing to find out.

Hermione pursed her lips in thought as she looked over the menu.

“Yes well I spoke to Bay, you know him, the unspeakable with the mole? And he said… and it was a bit difficult mind, he said he couldn’t really help much without more details but of course…” Harry looked at her impatiently, repressing the urge to tell her to bloody well get on with it. 

“Sorry, well he said that there’s basically just a lot they don’t know about the veil, but that it’s definitely some kind of portal to an afterlife, or at least a point where the separation between the two planes is weak.”

“Didn’t we already know that?”

“Sort of, but he also says that there’s quite a lot of other places where that’s the case too. It’s the place the veil is build on that’s the thin point you see, not the veil itself.”

“There’s a difference?”

Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed, obviously exasperated with his lack of fascination with intellectual distinctions.

“Yes, Harry, there’s a difference. The ministry was built around the weak point, and there’s others all around the world. They show up in literature all the time, places where people are supposed to have crossed to get to the underworld or limbo or wherever.”

“So because we don’t really know much about it it’s difficult for them to say whether people are necessarily totally gone if they go through alive. They know that people don’t come back out and are usually not seen again but there’s not a lot of cases these days… he said back when they used to use it for executions people would occasionally turn back up elsewhere, maybe at one of the other weak spots but not right away; they used to just take that as a sign that the person had been sent back because they were innocent. And he had one record of an unspeakable falling in about 100 years ago who cropped back up years later at the Forum in Rome.”

Harry was appalled.

“So if they knew people came back but just in other places why were we told he was dead??”

Hermione looked a little uncomfortable.

“Well… usually people don’t come back. If you include the executions an awful lot of people have been sent through and a hardly any ever came back at all. And all the records of people who did are so old, Bay had to really dig through some very old books to find out… They call it the Veil of Death… I think it was just a pretty safe assumption.” She immediately waved her hands and cut in as it became clear Harry was going to go off on one about exactly what he thought about ‘a safe assumption’ that Sirius was dead. “I’m not saying that was right Harry! Obviously it is mindlessly lax and they need to do some serious research on the thing, but you know what the Department of Mysteries is like, they hardly know how anything works down there really.”

Harry took a deep breath and calmed himself, it wasn’t Hermione’s fault, he knew that. But still… bloody unspeakables. Hermione seemed to take this as a sign that he was calm enough for her to continue.

“Anyway, from what you said about where Sirius showed up, it sounds like it was a point they were already vaguely aware of. There’s a river near there, the Acheron, that’s one of their points they have earmarked as a possible thin spot. They’ve had a couple of people show up there at random over the years.”

“Sirius did say they hadn’t seemed very surprised by him being there…”

Hermione nodded like that made sense.

“And the missing time?” Harry prompted her. “He went through the veil years before he turned up there, where was he in between?”

Hermione gave a sort of half shrug.

“Bay didn’t know on that. It was 7 years though you said?”

“Exactly 7 years.”

“Right, well Bay said the people who had shown up often were gone for quite a while and they seemed to be the same as when they left so some kind of limbo or stasis perhaps? But we’d be really totally guessing at this point.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully, he supposed that made a kind of sense, in as much as any of this really made sense.

Hermione looked at him carefully for a minute before continuing in a softer, less business like sort of tone.

“And how was he?”

“He was… fine. Happy I think. It was… I mean, he was doing ok.”

“And you?”

Harry’s food arrived and he used it as a distraction, poking around at it to avoid looking at Hermione.

“Me? I’m great, obviously. Been on holiday, got my godfather back, it’s all… great.”

Hermione reached out and covered his hand with her own.

“Harry, it’s been an intense couple of weeks; it’s ok if you feel strangely about it.”

Harry sighed and put his fork down.

“It’s not… It was great. Really it was, seeing him, it was amazing. And I feel like I was just getting to know him, like really know him, and realising I hadn’t really before and that was weird and then… now I’m back here again, and he’s not.” He shrugged, “it’s just all been a bit unreal. I don’t know how I feel really.”

Hermione gave his hand a squeeze.

“That’s ok. That’s normal I think. Well… maybe not normal, nothing about dead godfathers appearing on family holidays could really be considered normal I suppose. But really if it was going to happen to anyone it would have to happen to you.”

Harry found himself laughing at that, and as he carried on eating his pasta he did feel like a bit of a weight had been lifted. Talking to Hermione did tend to do that for him.

“Ron said he came by and saw you the other day, did he tell you about what Hugo did at the shop?”

Hermione spent the rest of lunch regaling him with stories of her children destroying the joke shop, seemingly deciding Harry had had enough conversations about difficult topics for one meal, which he was grateful for. Harry had been disappointed when Ron had left the aurors to go and work with George in the joke shop, but he had to admit the shop really made for more entertaining lunchtime anecdotes than law enforcement did and it seemed to be working out really well for Ron and Hermione. With the way they had always rowed in school he would have expected their marriage to be the same but between the two of them they really managed to make her having a high flying ministry job while he ran a shop and they raised two small children look relatively easy. They still argued of course, they wouldn’t be them without that, but it was mostly affectionate bickering. When Harry and Ginny had first started having problems he had asked Hermione how it was that her and Ron managed their schedules and the kids without falling out all the time and she had just said that they made sure to make time for each other and they worked together on things, as if that answered the question at all. He didn’t think she’d understood really.

They finished up their lunch and headed back to the office, Harry feeling generally lighter and much more optimistic about his enormous pile of paperwork.

He checked his phone when he sat back down at his desk, he never really went longer than an hour these days without checking it. There was a message from Sirius so he settled down to answer that before getting back to work.

_Shaving foam went fantastically, but Abby is pissed so I’m hiding out at the bar for the day. Hows your day of having a proper grown up job going?_

**Oh god, yeah probably a good move. I’m considering giving up being a grown up and joining a travelling circus, want to come with? It may be harder for Abby to find you there**

_I’m in, I’ll start practicing my fire juggling immediately_

Harry chuckled to himself, it sucked that Sirius was so far away but having him to chat to even like this did make his tedious paperwork days a little better at least.

———

“Do you guys ever think maybe you should hang out somewhere that isn’t your work?” Abby asked, slurring just a little. It was one of the rare nights that both Sirius and Nik had off together so they had decided to go for a drink and had now been there for about four hours. Abby had joined them after she’d got off work along with a couple of her friends from the office who Sirius had met a couple of times before and always seemed nice enough.

Nik scoffed at her.

“Why would we go to all of the effort to find another bar to sit at when this one right here is so much cheaper?”

Abby seemed to agree this was a good point but one of her friends, a small, blonde girl who Sirius thought was called Mary (… or Mara? Maria? He was sure it was something along those lines) looked thoughtful.

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to just sit and drink at the office and that’s pretty cheap too.”

“Yeah but our office is shit.” The third girl joined in, her name was Sofia, Sirius was certain on that one.

Mary and Abby nodded in agreement.

“We should go out after this though!” The girls all seemed to strongly agree with Abby on this one and started to chatter excitedly about where they should go, Sirius and Nik just looked at each other confusedly.

“We’re already out now.”

“Noooo out, out!” Sofia seemed to think this was obvious but Sirius couldn’t see the appeal at all of leaving their comfortable spot here to go and try and find another place where they would just be doing the exact same thing. Oh well, he supposed that was a future them problem. He sat back and had a swig of beer and was just watching the girls argue with Nik about the various merits of going “out, out” when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and smiled when he saw it was a message from Harry, which was enough for Nik to notice and be distracted from his argument.

“Oh here we go again.” Nik’s tone was teasing and he was smirking slightly. The Sofia and Mary looked confused but Abby had followed where Nik was looking and grinned too.

“He’s got a message from his boyfriend.” She teased.

Sirius rolled his eyes, this had become a pretty regular source of amusement for his two housemates.

“Ooh boyfriend?” Sofia asked, clearly very excited by this new train of conversation.

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Sirius said, although he knew from experience that this wasn’t going to stop the teasing.

“Right, he’s just a guy he knows… Who he’s always messaging, and smiling about, and talking about…”

“I don’t always talk about him!” Sirius interjected but Nik was in full flow now.

“And gazing out of windows and daydreaming about, and planning his future kids with.”

“Oh come on, now you’re just being ridiculous.” Sirius scoffed.

“So who is he?” Mary asked, clearly not believing Sirius’ assertion that he wasn’t his boyfriend at all.

“He’s just a guy I met. He knows me from ages back apparently but he is absolutely _not my boyfriend_.” He repeated this bit while glaring at Nik, who was still smirking. “He’s in England, I message him from time to time, that’s all.”

It was Abby’s turn to scoff this time.

“From time to time? Sirius you message him constantly! I don’t know how either of you fit in time to do anything else!”

“It’s not constantly…”

Nik and Abby ignored him.

“It really is, he burnt his toast 3 times in a row this morning because he was trying to come up with a reply.” Abby informed the other girls.

“It’s not like that!” Sirius knew he was fighting a losing battle here but it seemed like the thing to do. “I just like chatting to him. And he’s married anyway so he’s, and I can’t emphasise this enough, _definitely not my boyfriend!_ ”

Nik shrugged and took a sip of his beer, obviously not buying it at all.

“Fine.” He said, “but you obviously _wish_ he was.”

Sirius just ignored this comment and went back to his drink, hoping they would all just drop it. He wasn’t expecting to be that lucky though.

“Married and in England is definitely not convenient though.” Sofia noted thoughtfully, “probably best not to get too involved in that one.”

“I’m not involved…” But Sirius was cut off before he could finish.

“I agree. We should set you up with someone! That would help right?” Mary looked very pleased with herself at her clearly excellent brainwave.

Sirius groaned and put his head on the table, this conversation was really not going well for him.

“Oh Mark doesn’t date.” Abby chimed in helpfully.

“Why not?” Sofia looked personally offended by the idea. “You’re so pretty, you should definitely date, I know loooooads of people we could set you up with.”

“I do date.”

“No you don’t.” Nik scoffed.

“I do! There was… Richard! I dated him for a while.”

“You went on 4 dates and then decided you didn’t like his voice. And that was 2 years ago!”

Sirius fell silent for a second, thinking about it. Ok so he didn’t date a lot, it wasn’t a specific aversion to it as such he just… didn’t really meet people he was interested in much. And he was busy usually, in a not very busy actually sort of way. Mostly he just hadn’t thought a whole lot about it lately.

Abby got an evil sort of look on her face, clearly she had just had a genius plan.

“Ok, how about, to prove you do go on dates and Harry is not in fact your boyfriend, you let us set you up with someone?”

Sirius shook his head.

“Why on Earth would I agree that that was a good idea? I already know he’s not.”

“Right right, but if you do this then we _promise_ we’ll stop bringing it up.”

“But I like bringing it up!” Nik objected. Abby elbowed him in the side. Sofia and Mary enthusiastically jabbered agreement with Abby’s plan.

“Fine, fine.” Sirius surrendered. “Only one date though, and then you will drop it and never bother me with this again.”

Abby looked extremely smug and Sofia and Mary immediately got to work making plans for the rest of his life. Nik just raised an eyebrow in a way Sirius interpreted to mean “well you’re fucked now mate”.

Thankfully the two girls had to go away and do some homework on this before they could really arrange anything so the conversation moved on and the subject of Sirius’ non existent dating life was quickly forgotten.

By the time they got back to the flat Sirius felt distinctly hammered, the floor of the flat having strangely become quite uneven since he’d left earlier that day. Nik and Abby disappeared off into their room and left him in the kitchen, where he had decided that he needed to make a bacon sandwich.

He checked his phone, 3 messages from Harry.

**You’re out drinking? Jealous, I’m still in the office. Think they’d fire me if I had a beer at my desk?**

**Ok, I’m giving up, going to the pub with my mate Ron, the criminals can just run riot, I don’t care**

**You still out? Ron made me have tequila. Wish you were here, you’d like it I think**

_Tequila on a Thursday? Madness_

He hesitated a second before going with his drunk brain

_I wish I was there too._

It was crazy how much he missed Harry, given that he’d only actually spent a week hanging out with him. And Nik was maybe right that they did talk a lot but that was ok, right?

His phone buzzed again.

**I’m making you do tequila shots when you come to visit. I’ve had to suffer so you should too**

Sirius could picture Harry sitting in a bar screwing up his face as he was made to take shots, in his imagination he was wearing some kind of police uniform which Sirius had to admit looked pretty good on him…

_Do you have to wear a uniform for your job?_

**No, thank god**

_Shame, would look good on you_

Sirius could of hit himself as soon as he’d sent it, why was drunk him such an utter weirdo? Hopefully Harry would just take it as a random drunk thought rather than a strange inept flirtation… which is wasn’t of course, he’d just been wondering.

Sirius sighed and sat at the table. So maybe he had to concede that Nik was a tiny bit right. Obviously Harry was married, and probably straight, and in England, and apparently the son of someone he used to know (which seemed bizarre but ok), and probably a whole load of other things that meant obviously nothing would ever happen but he just didn’t seem to be able to stop thinking about him and those stupid green eyes of his. It would pass he was sure, just a stupid crush, clearly he needed to get out more. Maybe that date idea the girls had wasn’t the worst thing ever… 

Suddenly he realised that in his thinking he’d left bacon in a hot pan and it was giving off huge amounts of smoke; he dashed over to the pan and reached out to move it and then the pan just… disappeared. He stopped and looked blankly around, completely lost for what had happened. He knew he was drunk but that… wasn’t normal. Had he lost time or something? He searched around blindly for a bit, suddenly feeling even drunker than he had before. Eventually he gave up, deciding determinedly that he had imagined the whole thing and must have put the pan away or something, that or he was going mad…

He made his way into his bed and turned the lights off, shutting his eyes and determining not to think about disappearing pans, or Harry. Some of the images that had been flashing into his mind more and more regularly since he met Harry seemed to float behind his eyes (a black dog, a castle with a lake, a silvery stag…) he tried to ignore them for the most part because they didn’t seem to connect or mean anything, and some of them made him feel cold (flashing lights, a cold stone room, an old house…) but his drunk brain found it a little bit harder to push them away. Eventually he fell asleep, the last image he saw was a pair of green eyes.

———


	5. A Jammy Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one this time...

_Six months later_

Carla,

How are you? It feels like it’s been ages, I’ll come up and visit really soon I promise. It’s been busy here, I’ve been working a lot and Nik and I joined a football team, he may have told you. I’m rubbish at it. I got this postcard from a guy in the town square who was also selling cheese out of a bucket but I didn’t think you’d want any of that… There’s been something odd going on here too, I don’t really know how to explain it but strange things just keep happening around me. I thought I was imagining it at first but now I’m not sure. Nik thinks I’m mad but he also said to talk to you, that you might know something helpful. I don’t know I’m probably just imagining things really but if you could give me a call that would be great. 

Anyway, we both miss you, hope we can talk soon.

Lots of love, Mark  
xx

Sirius took another look over the postcard, that looked casual enough he thought, and hopefully vague enough that if she had no helpful ideas at all he hadn’t come off like a total lunatic. It had taken 4 months of things randomly vanishing or occasionally spontaneously flinging themselves through the air around him before he had reached his wits end and mentioned to Nik that something truly bizarre was going on. He hadn’t said anything to anyone else because… well obviously he was either possessed or going insane and that just wasn’t the sort of information you shared with everybody you knew. He couldn’t make it happen on demand though so Nik still sort of thought he was imagining things, but wasn’t too concerned about that because he was generally not too concerned about most things. He had recommended writing to Carla though, mostly, Sirius thought, because his advice for basically anything they didn’t know the answer to was to ask Carla. He wished he could just call her so he didn’t have to put it in writing but she didn’t really like to have her phone on because telemarketers called and her hearing wasn’t great. It was usually best to ask her to call them when she felt like it.

He posted the card on the way into work and then did his best to just not think about it for the rest of the afternoon.

It was kind of true that he’d been busy, he’d been picking up extra shifts at work as much as he could so that kept his time pretty full. He’d even gone on a few dates with a guy Sofia had found that she insisted would be perfect for him; his name was Ioannis and to be honest he was pretty perfect, he was good looking, had an interesting job, seemed like a really nice, charming, funny sort of person… they’d been out three times and he seemed really nice but for some reason he just kept forgetting to message him back and couldn’t ever seem to find a time that worked to arrange another date. Eventually Ioannis seemed to have just given up which Sirius felt a little guilty about but reasoned was probably for the best, he didn’t want to go out with him again and spend the whole time worrying that he was going to randomly make a heavy object fly into the side of the poor man’s head.

Other than his apparent demon possession problem, things had been much the same as usual. He worked, he played football, he saw friends, he texted Harry, rinse repeat. Harry had mentioned him coming to visit a couple of times but he’d been putting it off; the pesky crush feelings he’d had didn’t seem to be going away just yet and it seemed like the more responsible course of action was probably not going to visit him and his wife and kids…

———

It was 5 days later when the phone rang, Sirius had just narrowly avoided getting jam dumped on his head when the jar had spontaneously jumped away from his hand and deposited itself on his toast. To be fair that had been where he was planning on putting it so that was handy he supposed, he just hadn’t also been planning on throwing such a large amount of it on the wall and countertop. So when the phone rang he was busy cleaning that up, which accounted mostly for why he didn’t know who it was right away when he answered.

“Hello?”

“Mark, is that you love?”

“Er yes, who’s this?”

“Who’s this?!” The voice at the end of the line sounded extremely unimpressed and he realised a second too late that it was Carla.

“Oh sorry, I know, I know, hi Carla, how are you?”

It was too late however, she was off on a rant already.

“You boys, you hardly ever write, you never visit and now I call and it’s “who’s this?” I have half a mind to come down there and teach you both a lesson…”

“I know Carla, I’m sorry…”

“No manners at all, either of you. Now the girl is better, she knows how to respect her elders, you know she sent me biscuits just the other day? Lovely girl, though what she sees in Niko I will never understand…”

Sirius had given up trying to interject at this point, he settled down on the kitchen table and waited for her to burn herself out.

“I suppose there’s no accounting for taste, you must tell him I say he needs to hold on to that one.”

“I will Carla.”

“Good…” she finally seemed to stop for a breath.

“Now, what’s this you were wanting to talk about? I’m sorry dear but I really couldn’t make head of tails of that note of yours.”

Sirius pondered for a second, he still hadn’t really been able to think of a way to explain the whole thing that really fully did it justice.

“Well… so the thing is, and I know this sounds a bit strange mind… I think I might be possessed or something.”

Carla let out a disbelieving snort.

“Nonsense, why on Earth would you decide something so silly?”

The fact that Carla obviously thought the suggestion not even worthy of consideration made him feel a little better but still…

“There’s definitely something going on though. Things keep… moving around. And disappearing. And the other day I was looking at my hairbrush and it just…” He trailed off, this was the most ridiculous of the things that had happened and he hadn’t even told Nik about it yet; to be honest it had set him back on the track of thinking he was definitely just going insane.

“It just?” Carla prompted.

“Well… it turned into a hedgehog.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“I know I didn’t imagine it though! I had to take it outside and let it go…”

“A hedgehog you say?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” Carla went silent again for a few moments; Sirius wasn’t sure he’d actually heard her go so long without saying anything before. He’d just started to wonder whether she’d maybe run away to go call the men in white coats to take him away when she spoke again.

“You still don’t remember anything from before?”

He considered. He usually just said no, and that was true, he didn’t remember anything concrete… But there was no denying that he had more of those vague images now than he had had before; they weren’t connected or anything but there were more, and some of them came up more often than others.

“Bits and pieces.” He admitted, before adding “but not really.”

Carla was quiet again while she considered and then she spoke again.

“When I was a girl, there was another man- he came to us from the river, just like you, and he didn’t remember much, just like you, and he lived in the village for many years.”

Sirius listened patiently, she’d told him about the other river man before, he was in some of her favourite stories.

“He had gifts you know, we thought maybe that was why he was sent to us, we would go to him when we were hurt and he would make it better, he would touch plants and they would seem to grow better after that. I asked him once just how he did it but he always said he didn’t know, that he didn’t remember but he just could.”

Healing wounds and growing plants sounded at least vaguely useful, Sirius thought, feeling disgruntled. Of course he’d managed to luck out and get jam throwing and hedgehog hairbrushes…

“I think perhaps he had always been able to do those things though, and maybe you could too. Maybe it’s one of the things you have forgotten.”

“So you have no idea why it happens or how to stop it then?”

He expected her to take issue with his tone there but she didn’t.

“No my dear, I’m sorry.” Her voice was kindly and he felt badly for snapping at her. “I wish I could help. But I don’t think it’s a possession, better you think of it as a gift.”

If it was a gift, Sirius thought, he would very much like to return it. He didn’t say anything out loud though, he thought that may be pushing his luck a little.

“What about this lad you met who knew you from before?”

“Harry?” He’d mentioned Harry to her briefly the last time they’d spoken, in a would be casual sort of way, but he had a feeling Nik and Abby had given her much more detail.

“Yes, he knew you before, maybe he could help.”

Sirius considered it. While it was true that he hadn’t thought to ask Harry if, in the past, he’d had a particular habit of disappearing frying pans or throwing jam at walls with his mind, it did seem like maybe it might have come up if he’d known. Or maybe it wouldn’t… he was a bit new to the etiquette of these things. It didn’t seem like something you’d ask about in a text though…

“Yeah maybe. I could ask I suppose.”

“Yes dear, I think that would be wise. Now I must go, but you take care of yourself, and give my love to Abigail, she’s such a lovely girl…”

“Yes Clara, I will” Sirius said, rolling his eyes amusedly but very glad she couldn’t see him. “Bye, I love you.”

“I love you too dear, bye now.”

The phone clicked as she hung up and Sirius sat and thought for a while. He supposed he could talk to Harry about it… but also he quite liked Harry not thinking he was a raving nutcase. And he really didn’t know how you would phrase that in a text- “Hey Harry, how’s the weather in London? Also quick question, not important, but did I used to have a particularly useless and inconvenient set of magic powers?”. Or “Hey Harry, random question - have you found you have to clean less jam off your ceiling since I’ve been gone? Just wondering.”

He sighed and slumped his head into his hands, thinking that all this stressing was really quite exhausting and all he wanted was to stress eat some ice cream, which, of course, promptly flew out of the freezer and joined the jam mess on the wall.

_Great_

———


	6. Nothing Good Happens After 2am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I may have temporarily made Harry into a bit of an arsehole... Sorry about that.

Harry was annoyed. Well perhaps not annoyed, he was aware that would be a little too hypocritical, perturbed was maybe the right word for it. In a very rare turn of events he had been able to leave the office early, he had told Ginny in advance that he was going to be able to and she had seemed very happy about it, she had some things she could really do with getting done in the office she said, and it would be so helpful if he could sort out the kids and give her a couple of hours to do that.

So he’d come home early, relieved Molly who had been watching them in the day, took them home and spent the next couple of hours playing games and cooking dinner. At around 6pm he’d set them up in front of the tv and started cooking for himself and Ginny, not sure what time she’d be back but wanting to make sure he had it ready for her when she got back. At 8pm he started them getting ready for bed, tucking them in and heading back downstairs to have a glass of wine and wait for his wife. But it was now 11pm and there was still no sign of Ginny and he was starting to worry a little where she had got to.

He often found himself working late hours, so it probably wasn’t fair for him to get irritated about it. But then it was normal for him so she knew to expect it… Although that wasn’t really fair either, he knew she didn’t really like it. But she had seemed a lot less bothered as of late, like she was just resigned to it at this point; Harry didn’t like spending too much time thinking about whether or not that was a good thing… It had been a long time since they’d spent any time together really, mostly just passing each other in the mornings and as they sorted things out for the children, so he’d thought it would be nice to spend the evening together. But that was admittedly a little difficult to do when she wasn’t here.

At a few minutes before midnight he heard the key in the door, it opened and there was a bumping sound and a muffled “shit!” as Ginny clearly bumped into something. After a moment she appeared in the doorway of the living room, where Harry was sat on the sofa.

“Oh hi, you’re up, I thought you may be in bed already.” Her cheeks were flushed from the cold air outside and she seemed to be swaying slightly.

“I waited up, there’s dinner in the fridge if you want it. Did you just finish work?” He tried to not sound snippy but he couldn’t really help it.

“No, no, Blaise wanted to grab a drink after so I went along there for a couple.”

“You could have let me know.”

Ginny just looked confused at that.

“Well I didn’t think it would matter, I knew you were here to look after the kids tonight…” she looked panicked all of a sudden. “Why? Did something happen?”

“No, it just would’ve been nice to know you weren’t coming in, I thought it may be good to spend some time together. But it’s fine…” 

“Are you serious?” She blinked, seemingly unable to process what he’d just said.

“Well, yeah…” He didn’t understand what it was that he’d said that she could be so confused by and it was a little annoying. It didn’t get any less annoying when she then burst out laughing. “What’s funny?”

“You’re actually fucking serious? You haven’t been home at a reasonable hour in months, whenever you are here you barely speak to me, as soon as the kids aren’t here you’re always on your phone and now just because you happen to be in early for once because it’s convenient for you you expect me to magically know you want to spend _time_ with me?!” She didn’t even seem angry, more incredulous than anything. Harry thought that probably wasn’t fair; it sounded way worse than it actually was when she said it like that…

“It’s just been busy at work lately, you know that…”

“Oh really? So busy that you can’t get home before 10pm? So busy that you can’t even pay any attention to me when you’re not at work? This is silly Harry, I’m not arguing about this. I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” She went to head up the stairs but Harry called after her.

“Ok so you’re annoyed about it, let’s talk about it then, let’s make a plan. This weekend maybe?”

She turned back to look at him.

“Why?”

He stared at her blankly.

“What do you mean why?”

“Why do you want to? We’ll spend one day doing something, we’ll agree that we need to do better, and then you’ll go straight back to working all the time and finding anything else in the world you’d rather do than spending time with me.”

“That’s not true, Gin, I love spending time with you, I’ve just been…”

“Busy, yes I know, you’ve been busy for the last 3 years, forgive me if I don’t believe that’s suddenly going to change because we go to the petting zoo this weekend.” Usually by this point she would have been shouting, but she still didn’t seem angry. It occurred to Harry now he thought about it that she hadn’t shouted about anything for quite some time, almost as if she just didn’t care enough to shout anymore.

But it seemed like at least one of them should be angry, so Harry started to get pissed off.

“So you don’t even want to try anymore?” He said, just a tone away from shouting.

Ginny sighed.

“It’s not that, Harry, I just… can we not talk about this right now? If you really want to talk about this properly then let's do it another time when it’s not midnight and I haven’t been at the pub?”

That sounded quite reasonable, which was annoying, and it reminded him that she’d been at the pub so that seemed like the obvious thing to grasp onto.

“Right, the pub, with _Blaise_. Is that why you don’t want to talk about this? You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with him lately…”

Ah yes, that seemed to push her buttons enough to make her angry…

“Oh piss off Harry, he’s a friend and that’s all and you know it! Don’t try and project your issues onto me.”

“What issues would those be?” He was secretly pleased to have got a rise out of her, but knowing that he was pleased about it made him feel a little sick with himself.

“There’s been three of us in this relationship for the last 6 months, ever since we got back from Greece it’s been me here, and you with Sirius.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Harry felt his face flush as he stuttered the words out indignantly. “Sirius is my godfather, so we talk, that’s normal.”

“Yeah, sure, I sit up in bed late at night and text my godfather too.” She rolled her eyes sarcastically. “ _You’re_ ridiculous Harry.”

“I don’t even know what you’re suggesting here, I haven’t even seen Sirius for…”

“You know exactly what I’m suggesting Harry.” She cut him off. “So don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“It’s not…” He didn’t even really know what to say. He’d been about to say, “it’s not like that”, or “he’s just a friend” or “you’re insane” but none of those felt quite right.

Ginny seemed to calm down a little.

“Look, this is why I didn’t want to talk about this right now; it’s late.” She seemed to take pity on him a little bit. “I know you don’t mean to be hurtful Harry, and you’re confused and you have a weird dynamic with him and it’s a bit intense at the moment. Just… think on it ok? You’re going to have to decide whether you want to make this work, as a family; I’m not going to play take second place to your phone for the rest of our lives.” She briefly, patted the back of his hand, her anger seemingly gone again now. “I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

“You don’t have to…” Harry tried to object, but Ginny shook her head.

“I could do with some space just for tonight. But we’ll talk at the weekend I promise. Just… think on it ok?”

He nodded, watching her walk up the stairs before sinking his head into his hands, his mind spinning. After a few minutes he decided he needed some fresh air and grabbed his coat to go for a walk and that was how he ended up at a bar at 1am, nursing a beer and trying desperately to sort out his thoughts.

He’d known things had been going badly with Ginny, but he’d always thought they’d work it out eventually. Granted he hadn’t done anything to make that happen and he knew that was shit of him, if he was honest he’d been a straight up terrible husband for a while now. And she was right to be pissed at him, he made up excuses not to come home, he didn’t make time for her   
(he didn’t _want_ to make time for her), he didn’t pay attention when she was there, and _Sirius_ …

He didn’t know when it had happened or how it had got so out of hand but it was like he was addicted; somehow since he’d been back and they’d been talking every day they’d just got closer and closer until Harry felt like he missed him if he hadn’t heard from him in a couple of hours. He thought about him all the time, anything that happened in the day his first thought was to tell Sirius about it, and if he was honest with himself (which he tried to avoid being, on this particular subject) his feelings couldn’t quite be described as familial…

But that didn’t make any sense. Sirius was his godfather, Sirius was a _man_ , and he wasn’t attracted to men. Or at least he hadn’t given any thought to being attracted to men, or really anyone for that matter since he and Ginny had been together. Sure, he noticed when there was an attractive woman (he’d notice that Sirius was attractive too, a sneaky voice inside his mind reminded him) but that was about the extent of it. He pushed that train of thought away and looked around, hoping to distract himself with a bit of people watching; there were still quite a few people out, most of them extremely drunk looking. One man over in the corner raised his glass up in his direction in a sort of “cheers” motion and Harry tried to smile and returned the motion before turning back to face the bar and swirl his drink around again. The man in the corner seemed to have taken this as an invite to come over and talk to him though, and he felt the stool next to him pulled out as he took a seat and stuck out his hand.

“Hi, Mikey, who might you be?”

“Harry.” Harry shook his hand briefly. He didn’t feel enormously in the mood for conversation but it could take his mind of things he supposed, this bloke must be here by himself too.

“So what brings you here looking all glum and lonely then?” Mikey said, leaning on the bar so he was angled to face Harry.

“Just getting a drink, couldn’t sleep I guess.” He didn’t really feel like going into the whole row with Ginny with a stranger at a bar. Mikey didn’t seem to mind anyway.

“Well it’s as good a place to go as any I suppose. You’re not here usually.”

It wasn’t a question, Harry shook his head anyway.

“I’d definitely remember if I’d seen you here before.” There was an odd tone to his voice that Harry couldn’t quite place. Harry looked at Mikey properly for the first time, he was a reasonably big man, with dark hair and smiling brown eyes; he had a couple of tattoos poking out from under the sleeves of his t-shirt. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” Mikey asked.

Harry weighed it up, the bar was open for another couple of hours he thought, and there was no way he was getting to sleep if he went home now; staying for one more couldn’t hurt and the company may help.

“Sure, that’d be great, thanks.”

Mikey waved over the barman and ordered them a couple of drinks. He was a good conversationalist asking lots of questions about Harry’s life and peppering him with funny anecdotes. It wasn’t until the second drink, when he started rubbing his hand along Harry’s thigh that Harry realised he was flirting with him.

His immediate thought was to be embarrassed and to correct the mistake, let Mikey know that he was terribly sorry but he’d obviously got the wrong end of the stick, and Harry was actually married and straight he thought. Possibly mostly straight anyway. But something stopped him. And some slightly tipsy, tired, confused voice right at the back of his head told him what was the harm? It was just flirting… And maybe it would help him work things out, if he could know, did he just have a weird codependent daddy issues type relationship with Sirius or was it possibly a men in general thing? He wasn’t sure what would be the better outcome but it seemed like a helpful thing to know. So he stayed, and he didn’t mention the hand-thigh thing to Mikey, and he didn’t mention his wife, and he had another drink. 

Eventually the bar shut and they got kicked out, the two of them headed to the street outside and the cold air hit Harry in the face, making his head spin.

Mikey grinned and turned to him.

“Fancy one more at my place.”

Alarm bells screeched in Harry’s head, slightly muted by the alcohol but definitely still there.

“No, I err… I really shouldn’t. I have work tomorrow.”

“Pity… well do you have a phone?”

Harry nodded. Mikey fished around in his pocket and handed him over a bit bit of card, it was a business card.

“Well give me a call then, we can hang out.

“Er yeah, sure…” Harry didn’t know what else to say.

Mikey seemed to take this as confirmation he was interested and leant forward, kissing him firmly on the lips. Harry froze for a second, before finding himself kissing back, Mikey’s lips felt good against his and he felt that familiar feeling stirring in the base of his stomach, his tongue swiped against Harry’s lip and suddenly Harry realised what he was doing and panicked, pulling back sharply.

“Er yeah, I er… I have to go. Um… bye.” He all but legged it in the direction of home, horrified at what had just happened.

What was he doing? How had he let it get that far? Fuck… He loved his wife, he’d loved her since he was a teenager, and he’d been such an arsehole to her, just now and earlier tonight and really every day for the last few years. He would go to bed, forget this ever happened and wake up tomorrow and be better. He’d be a better husband and a better father and he’d make it work, he had to. 

———

Harry had snuck into the house at around 4am and ended up only getting about an hours sleep before he had to sneak out again for work. The whole of the night before felt like some kind of really horrific dream, and he just wanted desperately to forget the whole thing. He was just settling down at his desk with the first of what he was sure would be many coffees when his phone rang.

He looked at the screen, it was Sirius, he groaned inwardly; usually he would be delighted to speak with him but right now it just seemed like more confusion to pile on confusion.

He answered anyway.

“Hey.”

“Hi!” Sirius’ voice came through a bit crackly, and despite himself Harry felt himself cheer up a little. “Quick one, sorry I know you’re probably at work…”

“It’s fine I just got here. What’s up?”

“So something came up, and I really could do with talking with you about it, I thought I might take you up on that offer to come visit?” 

Harry’s stomach did a kind of strange swooping thing, his first impulse was to tell him absolutely, come now, come yesterday, stay forever, but his argument with Ginny was still fresh in his head. He couldn’t even imagine her face if, after all that, he announced that Sirius was coming to stay with them… But he really did want to see him, so badly, and maybe actually seeing him in real life would help sort his head out.

“That would be amazing, it would be great to see you. Did you need somewhere to stay or…?”

“No, no, that’s ok.” Sirius answered very quickly. “You’d have work and stuff and I wouldn’t want to get in the way, I’ll find somewhere. I was thinking week after next if you have any time with work and that?”

“Yeah of course, I’ll make time, it’s not a problem.” Harry grinned, he couldn’t help it, despite how shitty everything was and how hungover and confused he was he really was genuinely excited to see Sirius again. “I can’t wait to see you.”

“Yeah me either. Look, that was all so I’ll let you get back to work. I’ll text you details.”

“Alright, speak soon.”

“Byeeee.” The line clicked off and Harry was left sitting at his desk, grinning to himself and trying not to think how he was going to be able to convince Ginny not to divorce him over this.

———


	7. Shopping Trolleys in the Thames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapter Saturday!
> 
> I was meant to be studying today so obviously instead I'm posting chapters of this and then watching the rugby. Like a responsible grown up.

Harry had bought Ginny flowers that weekend, and all but grovelled, and they went out on the Saturday with the kids and it was a perfectly nice day where no one argued or accused anyone of having emotional or actual affairs even once. They’d had a perfunctory conversation about their argument and Harry had promised to do better and Ginny raised an eyebrow in a way that clearly said she’d believe it when she saw it but she didn’t argue. And when Harry had told her that Sirius was going to be in town for a little while in a couple of weeks but he absolutely would make sure it didn’t get in the way of spending time with her and the kids, expecting her to go ballistic, she had just nodded. Over the next two weeks he did try his best to live up to his promise; he came back from work at a reasonable time most days, they had dinner together a few times without the kids, they even went out to a restaurant with Ron and Hermione and had actual grown up conversation. Harry tried to ignore the squirming guilty feeling in his belly that he felt every time _that_ night flashed unbidden into his mind.

Because really, now separated from it, had it been that bad? Yes, he’d made a stupid mistake, he had been confused, it was shitty of course but he knew that, he wasn’t going to do it again and if it had made him feel bad enough to actually try harder in his marriage then was that the worst thing? But then he felt shit for trying to excuse his awful behaviour so trying to forget about it seemed like the best course of action.

Ron had been excited when he’d told him Sirius was coming to visit, and he and Hermione had insisted that they had to go for dinner and drinks together while he was over. Ginny hadn’t commented on that one, Harry suspected she may not be rushing to come along…

So by the time the few weeks had passed between Sirius’ call and when he was due at the airport, things had really calmed down a bit in Harry’s world. He’d offered to meet Sirius at the airport so he had taken the afternoon off work (he tried not to feel too bad about having not mentioned that part to Ginny), and spent most of the morning clock watching until it was time to head out. They were going to have to get the train back into the city for obvious reasons, but to get there he only had to apparate to one of the airport’s safe apparition points; there didn’t seem much point in braving the tube both ways.

He was half an hour early for Sirius’ flight because he’d been too twitchy to sit around the office so he ended up spending a while getting a coffee and watching passers by; airports were good for people watching it turned out. He could see on the board when the flight had landed and spent a good 20 minutes staring way too intensely at the gate from arrivals; he felt like he was wound far too tight, his stomach was jittering and he felt just stupidly nervous, more nervous than he could remember being ever which was just stupid because it was _Sirius_ ; he was his friend, not some foreign dignitary he was entertaining. Harry was just having a word with himself about how silly he was being when Sirius appeared through the gate.

He looked around for a moment, searching for Harry and when he spotted him his face broke out into a beaming smile and broke into a fast walk in his direction. Harry only had time to marvel at how Sirius somehow managed to be the only person that still looked good after a flight before he found himself wrapped in a tight hug. He hugged Sirius back tightly, breathing in the smell of his hair and vaguely noting to himself that he was totally fucked, while also finding it very hard to care. 

“Fuck, I can’t believe you’re here!” Sirius still hadn’t let go and Harry could feel his breath tickling his ear when he spoke. “And I’m here! In London of all places. Nik is going mad with jealousy.”

He pulled away from the hug and Harry immediately missed the warmth. It was still weird to him to hear Sirius talk about London like it was some strange exotic place.

“It’s great to see you.” Harry felt that was a bit of an underwhelming greeting somehow but it was all his brain seemed to be able to come up with. “How was the flight?” And that was just dull, good job Potter.

Sirius didn’t seem to mind if it was a boring small talk question and launched into a diatribe about the airport and the plane and the luggage belts that lasted them until they were well on their way on the train. Harry just listened contentedly and laughed along, watching his hands wave around in that ridiculous, energetic way they did.

They quickly dumped Sirius’ stuff off at the hotel before deciding that they definitely needed lunch so they headed out to a pub Harry knew by the river that did good food. Even though they’d been in pretty much constant communication for the last few months there still seemed to be a fair amount to catch up on and Harry didn’t even think to ask Sirius what the thing he’d mentioned wanting to talk about had been until they’d been there for at least a couple of hours, even though he had definitely spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of weeks wondering what could be so important that he needed to travel to tell him.

Eventually he did remember though and asked.

“So what was the big thing you wanted to talk about anyway?”

“I wanted to talk about?” Harry was pretty sure Sirius was feigning ignorance, which was interesting…

“You said on the phone?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a big thing as such. I don’t think… well it’s just a bit weird maybe.” Sirius suddenly became quite uncharacteristically awkward, scratching his head and avoiding Harry’s eye and Harry’s interest in what was going on doubled.

“Seems like it must be big-ish at least, for you to come all the way over here specially…”

Sirius waved his hand dismissively, “nah, really minor, barely noteworthy, just an excuse to come see you really”, he was trying to joke but it was obviously not really genuine.

Harry was a bit worried now.

“Come on Sirius, what’s up?”

Sirius sighed resignedly.

“Ok, but just… Fair warning, I’m going to sound like a head case and you’re never going to want to hang out with me again.”

“I doubt it but go on.”

“So you know when you knew me before, in all that time I don’t remember?” 

“Obviously.” Harry nodded.

“Well did I ever… so I’ve been finding lately… and I know this sounds crazy…” Sirius trailed off, seemingly at a total loss for finding what words to use.

Harry reached out and covered his hand with his, he couldn’t help it, he was looking so distressed. It seemed to help a little.

“So recently I’ve been having this problem where things keep… happening around me. And I thought I was possessed and Nik thought I was mad but Carla said to talk to you and I didn't really want to, I kind of don’t want you to think I’m insane, but I’m sort of low on options at this point and… well it seemed worth a try. To see if you knew. Why it might be I mean, or if it used to happen before. Or I guess if you knew a really good exorcist…” 

Harry didn’t reply for a moment and Sirius started to look a bit panicked.

“Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything should I?” 

Harry cut him off before he could start rambling again.

“No, no, I’m glad you did. When you say things have been happening?”

Sirius gulped a bit, clearly still full of nervous energy.

“Things flying around, disappearing, mostly food related…”

“Ah…”

“I did warn you it was crazy…”

“It’s not crazy.” Harry glanced around, “I just think… maybe its something we should talk about back at the hotel?”

Sirius looked surprised.

“In a “we should talk back at the hotel because you’re being a crazy person in public” way? Or in a you actually know what’s going on way?”

“The second one. Come on, let’s go now.” Harry paid the tab on the way out and they didn’t talk at all on the walk back. Harry trying to organise in his brain how he was meant to go about explaining the whole concept of magic and the wizarding world in one go…

When they got to the room Sirius sat down on the bed and looked at him expectantly, clearly expecting him to get right to it.

The Hagrid approach it was then…

“So… the thing is… you’re a wizard.”

———

Sirius had thought that he was pretty good at dealing with new and weird information; after all, over the last 7 years he had dealt with nothing else, but he definitely wasn’t ready for the onslaught of information that came. 

So he was a wizard, magic was real and he had apparently once known all about it. He’d been to a magic school which was how he’d known Harry’s parents who had been murdered by some power hungry psychopath, then he’d spent 12 years in prison (which seemed like a truly insane thing to not be able to remember) before he’d escaped, lived as an escaped convict for a few years before apparently dying in a fight which was apparently part of an enormous war that went on that most of the world never even knew happened… 

And Harry was a wizard too. And his family were and he worked for some secret wizard government and it appeared Sirius knew basically nothing about his life in spite of the fact that they had been constantly talking for the last half a year.

Oh and he was Harry’s godfather, which was a bit of an escalation on the rather understated way Harry had previously described their relationship (“you were friends with my parents” was true technically he supposed but wasn’t quite the same thing as “I’m an orphan and you were my stand in parental figure for a while there”).

The rational part of his brain understood that all this would have obviously been a lot to tell him when they’d first met (re-met?), and he knew that he’d probably have thought Harry was mad and run away but he couldn’t help it… he was pissed off. Being angry with Harry was quite an uncomfortable new feeling that he didn’t really know what to do with so once Harry had finished his monologue explaining the whole thing he found himself sitting in silence for a bit, trying to process and getting really nowhere with it.

“Sirius? Can you just say something please?” Harry sounded worried and a bit pleading.

“Were you ever going to mention any of this to me? Like if I hadn’t turned up here vanishing frying pans all over the place would it have ever come up? Or was the plan just to lie to me about who you are and who I am and the entire way the world works forever?” That came out possibly a bit harsher than Sirius had intended but he didn’t think it was entirely unfair.

Harry seemed at a bit of a loss for words.

“No I… I don’t think… I didn’t really have a plan as such, I’m sorry I know I should have… It’s a lot to explain to a person.”

Sirius had to admit that that was true, but it really didn’t make him feel any better. He wasn’t sure what he was more upset about, the whole prison, convict, war, thing was pretty dire sure but he didn’t remember it so that did take some of the impact out… even though he’d already been pretty sure his life pre-forgetting had been pretty miserable, it was still a little depressing to hear just how much. He was upset Harry hadn’t told him for sure, but he could sort of understand why about the whole magic world thing, he would have definitely appreciated a heads-up on the godfather situation, that made his stomach twist a little when he acknowledged the definitely not-godfatherly feelings he had towards Harry… But he suddenly felt like the man he was in a room with was someone else entirely, someone that he was supposed to know in one way or another but didn’t and who had been lying to him in some respects for the last 6 months and that hurt a lot more than he wanted it to.

He buried his face in his hands and tangled his fingers in his hair.

“Look, can you just… go, for a bit.”

“Sirius, I’m really sorry, please don’t…” Sirius cut him off.

“Just for a while, please? I need a minute to think and… I just don’t want you to be here right now.”

Harry looked so hurt and it made Sirius feel like his lungs were being squeezed but he didn’t take it back, he really just needed some space right now.

“Ok, I’ll go but… how long for? We need to talk about this more Sirius, and we need to work out about getting your magic under control, and I can’t just…” Harry trailed off. 

“I don’t know, I just know I need a bit of time.” He reached over and squeezed Harry’s hand, the more upset Harry looked the worse Sirius felt and he really couldn’t deal with that on top of everything else.

“I’ll call you, ok? I will, and we can talk again, I promise I won’t just disappear or anything I just need to think.”

This seemed to help a bit and Harry nodded, standing up to go.

“Ok… ok, good. Just… have a think, take a minute, and whenever you’re ready just call me and I’ll be here, whenever you’re ready. I just can’t lose you again ok?”

Sirius felt that squeezing in his chest again but just nodded, not quite able to make any words come out at this point. He watched Harry leave the room before collapsing backwards onto the bed. 

———

He wasn’t sure how much time passed while he was just lying there staring at the ceiling. Enough time that he started to get hungry so ordered room service, which he ate, before resuming his busy schedule of lying down and staring. For the first time since he’d been having those flashes of memories he actually consciously looked at them, trying to sort them to match the things Harry had told him. He half expected a flood of memories to come rushing back, but they didn’t; the context helped with the images, sure, the bright flashing lights and weird made up sounding words made a bit more sense now rather than seeming like an acid trip or a weird tv show he must have watched once, and now he knew what they were the cold feeling he felt when he saw that damp, stone room and the happy one at the castle on the lake were more pronounced. But he didn’t suddenly remember all the friends he had lost, or his school days, or his time on the run which, when he considered, he was glad about. He had been right, he thought, about not wanting to know too much about before; it sounded like his life had been short, and harsh, and depressing and now he had so much, and was for the most part so happy.

On the plus side, it was definitely a relief to know he wasn’t possessed or losing his marbles. And if he’d had a handle on this magic lark before then it stood to reason he could do it again and go back to putting jam on his toast with a knife like a normal human being. He wondered how long that would take… Harry would help him he supposed.

Harry…

He didn’t know how he would see him again without just feeling incredibly awkward; he couldn’t imagine how Harry would feel if he’d known that someone he thought of as a father figure had spent the last 6 months nursing a ridiculous teenage crush on him. As if the whole thing wasn’t already inappropriate enough… Sirius supposed it was a little funny, in a tragic sort of way, that the only person he’d had any sort of real feelings for in years was married, straight, lived in another country and to top it all off thought of him as a parent. You didn’t really get a whole lot more unavailable than that. Well he would just have to squash that down now, it was all well and good having inappropriate feelings for married men and knowing you couldn’t act on them but when said married man was also your godson that was probably taking it a touch too far.

The next morning he managed to get up and walk around a bit, down by the river, which was kind of disgusting- no one had ever mentioned that when they’d told him about London. He amused himself by counting the shopping trollies in the water as he passed and by the time he got back to the hotel he felt like maybe he’d calmed down enough to call Harry, so he did. 

Harry picked up on the first ring.

“Hey Sirius.”

“Hey…” 

“How um… how are you doing?”

“A bit better.” Which was true, he couldn’t say he was completely recovered but the overwhelming panicky feeling from the day before had definitely passed. “Do you maybe want to come by later? Don’t worry if you have work or plans or whatever…”

Harry cut him off.

“No it’s fine, that’d be great, I’ll be there. Round 6 ok?”

Sirius nodded and then remembered Harry couldn’t see him.

“Sure, 6 works. I’ll er… I’ll see you later.”

He hung up the phone. Ok, that was one job sorted, now he just had to kill a few hours. He ended up spending most of the day just walking around, he’d got on the tube once in an attempt to get to somewhere the concierge at the hotel had said there was a good market but he’d apparently got on the wrong branch of whatever the black line was and ended up in completely the wrong place so after that he decided to stick to travelling on foot. London was massive, way bigger than he was used to, and kind of dirty; there were way too many people and the cars seemed to be trying really hard to mow him down but weirdly he kind of liked it. By the time he made it back to the hotel it was almost time to meet Harry and he’d only had time to briefly splash some water on his face and re-tie his hair before there was a knock at the door.  
Harry looked awkward as he came in the room and Sirius hated that; they hadn’t been awkward with each other even when they’d first met. Well except from the brief bathroom encounter but he didn’t really count that. He plastered on his best cheery grin, hoping that if one of them pretended to be comfortable then the awkwardness would dissipate. 

“Hey, how was work?” That was a small talk classic, can’t go wrong with how was work.

“It felt pretty long, lots of paperwork… Can I sit?”

Sirius dropped himself down on the bed and gestured to Harry to sit too. Harry seemed to toss up between sitting by Sirius on the bed or in the chair by the desk for a second before obviously coming to a personal decision and choosing the chair.

“How are you feeling today? About everything? Did it help, the thinking?” Harry continued, clearly having decided to skip over small talk entirely.

“It helped. I wouldn’t say I’m completely 100% adjusted to the idea but… it helped. I’m sorry for chasing you off yesterday.”

Harry shook his head refusing to accept the apology.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you had every right… of course you needed space. And I’m sorry I lied to you about… things. I was just so happy to find you and I didn’t want to scare you off and then the longer it went on the more awkward it got but I want to be honest with you about things…” Harry was rambling and Sirius was filled with a sudden urge to kiss him until he shut up, but thankfully he managed to repress that urge in favour of reaching over and covering his mouth with his hand. Harry’s eyes went comically wide and Sirius couldn’t help but laugh.

“Sorry, you were rambling.” He removed his hand. “It’s ok. I was a bit angry, I’ll admit, it was a lot. But I get it. Just maybe lets not keep whole entire magical communities secret from each other from now on, yeah?”

Harry nodded, a smile breaking on to his face for the first time since he’d come in.

“You said about learning to control this magic thing, right?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah, I think it should be easy enough now you know but we can work on it.”

“I guess I’ll be having to stay here for a little while then, huh?”

Harry smiled again, much wider this time.

“I guess so.”


End file.
